Plextor® LLC, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, today announced two new multifunction disc drives that combine next-generation Blu-Ray and HD DVD technologies.
I suppose this makes some kind of sense, but surely HD DVD owners are going to ask themselves the following question: Which is cheaper, buying this product as a transition machine to Blu-ray or buying a Blu-ray-only player and replacing their HD DVD discs with Blu-ray discs? And they must consider that, unless they take the second option, they'll eventually have to replace their HD DVD player which may not be manufactured in the future.
I have to ask who these people are that break CE devices every few years? I have a Sharp VHS player that I bought in 1997 that still works. Yes, VHS is pretty much buried. Does VHS still outsell Blu-Ray like it did this time last year? Most CE components should last at least a good 5 years plus. After that, does it really matter, since the next best thing will be out then.
LG is still supporting HD DVD even if Toshiba isn't.
Good point. I have a Pioneer LaserDisc player that still works as well as the day I bought it and I'm not about to throw it out because I have a large library of LaserDiscs that I still watch from time to time. I agree. Today's manufacturing standards typically give us long lifetimes.
However, at the time I bought the LaserDisc player there was no talk of an immediate replacement standard. That's different than the case we have here where we have a new product that's being introduced with the knowledge that one of the recording standards it supports is essentially obsolete. I can see buying one if you already have a large library of HD DVD discs, but I'm suggesting that it might pay to consider the cost tradeoff of simply replacing the HD DVD discs with Blu-ray to guard against the eventuality that one day your player will fail and a replacement HD DVD player will no longer be offered. You're right; it may take a very long time to fail, but it will fail. Moreover, there is a small but finite possibility that it will fail much sooner.
A good counter argument might be there will be a new standard one day anyway, so what's the big deal? Here again, it's like Las Vegas. You're just playing the odds.
