over a decade ago i gave away my little hd-dvd collection and replaced them all with blu-ray discs. it was a good move.

i was surprised to find myself a little wistful about the hd-dvd format this year. there was something very exciting and aspirational about the hd disc format wars of the late 2000s. trash quality streamed video wasn’t even on the horizon yet, and cinemaphiles suddenly were given new and interesting choices.

my sole regret was giving away the 5-disc collector’s edition of Blade Runner. it had 5 different cuts of the film, a 4.5 hour documentary, and tons of extras on separate discs

after many, many years of hunting thrift stores for it, i finally found it today for $5 and couldn’t be happier. i plan to pick up a used hd-dvd player - perhaps even that goofy xbox 360 addon. 😅

#hddvd #movies

@vga256 I'm still mad this shook out the way it did. The actual experience on hddvd was imo generally much much nicer: discs usually assumed you wanted to watch the movie, so would usually just start playing, menus were fast and simple overlays, and navigation was quicker in general.

I still have my small hddvd collection somewhere, but the player broke and I got rid of it. Regret.

@megmac couldn’t agree more. i was very impressed with the quality of extras on many releases too. i would have never gone to bluray if this format hadn’t died.

i’ve got my eyes open for a player now. i had a toshiba hd-a30 a decade ago. i do remember that it ran hot.

@vga256 I pretty much tossed a coin on buying the bluray vs hddvd version of the “berifcase” special edition of this, and luckily landed on the bluray so I can still enjoy it to this day
@vga256 Oh wow, that genuinely looks like quite the set.
@misty back when regular studios released discs with tons of extras :\
@vga256 That looks amazing! Congrats! That’s $5 well spent… 😉
@vga256 obligatory “All these… HD-DVD discs… will be lost in… time… like tears… in rain”