Friday, February 23, 2007

The Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player: A Complete Joke

USA Today reviews the combo DVD player that can handle (sort of) both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs. It's laughably bad. Some people idiotically claimed this would help end the format war because people wouldn't have to "choose" between the two types of discs. Of course they would? Who wants to buy 50 titles in Blu-Ray only to see it phased out. When your player dies after five years, you're not going to be able to buy another one, so you'd be screwed. Anyway, the $1200 machine they review was really built for Blu-Ray but they just retrofitted it to handle HD-DVD as well. Kind of -- it can't find special features, extras don't always work, the sound on some titles dropped out (probably poorly mastered discs and not the machine) and to top it off, the darn thing doesn't even play CDs. Are they kidding? Why would anyone commit to either of these formats? Stay away, that's my advice.

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