Why you shouldn't be too upset if you bought an HD-DVD player

Long story short: Though I haven't read this anywhere, turns out my HD-DVD and Blu-ray players play regular (not high-def) DVDs differently, such that in many cases one player provides a much better viewing experience.

John Kay, the excellent Financial Times columnist, recently lamented how he was now stuck with an expensive doorstop since his HD-DVD player was the loser in the recently concluded format wars.

I tried to cheer him up with the following email.

Dear John,

I happen to have purchased both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players a couple months ago after getting a wonderful Pioneer flat screen HDTV.

I have noticed that regular DVDs sometimes play differently on the two machines, even though both are said to play such discs without any problem.

Not true.

Sometimes one DVD player will display the picture in a stretched format or with funny sized/colored (gray rather than black) bars to the sides or above and below the picture.

In such cases the other player seems to handle the picture just fine and makes for fine viewing; and vice versa.

I strongly recommend keeping your HD-DVD player at hand even after such discs no longer are offered for sale, as a back-up for regular DVDs that don't play right on your Blu-ray player, as detailed above.

I haven't yet mentioned this in my blog but now that I've spelled it out here I just might.

Best,

Joe

(dimmest bulb on the tree)