KMC Forums - The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD Format War

Hello everyone, today I dont have an article but instead its a cut and past from another forum that I found by reading up more about HD-DVD and Blu Ray. This is short as always but very shocking.

The user types:

My Best Boy Experience (alarming for HD DVD survival)
So I go into Best Buy in Pleasant Hill, CA to check out Blu Ray and HD DVD once again. I see the Blu Ray player in their "Magnolia" home theater setup connected to a 50inch Elite Plasma.

After fiddling with the TV for a while, we couldn't get it working so I ask the Magnolia Rep (operations not sales) assisting me, to show me HD DVD which I assumed would be displayed in a similar manner. Certainly not the case. At the end of an isle, the HD DVD setup is connected to a Westinghouse 37inch and enough bright lights around it to give you a nice tan. This guy was really cool about everything and liked idea of comparing the 2 units on the same screen so he brought along the Samsung.

Arriving at the isle we discover that the HD DVD player is hooked up via componenet and playing the demo disc. We connect the Blu Ray player and it comes on. We go into setup to select 1080p but it's grayed out. It'll only allow 1080i for the Westinghouse (anyone know why?). Well, whatever.....we select 1080i and start the movie which happened to be House of Flying Daggers. I take the remote and jump right into an action scene towards the middlee of the film where the girl is in the middle of the bamboo forest and getting attacked.

About 2 mins into it, the Magnolia rep starts laughing "wow, this sucks." I couldn't help but agree. During this time, a tall sales person with an Eastern European accent who'd been watching us for a bit, comes over with a completely different reaction "beautiful...best picture I've seen." We both just nod our head "sure." After about 10mins of watching this mess, we properly connect the HD DVD player via HDMI and start the demo. I asked them to play a movie but he tells me "we're not allowed" so I calmly state that I'll BUY the movie and let's see it. "Can't." Nothing I said was good enough let me, an obvious buyer, play a real movie. Needless to say, even in such horrid display conditions, the HD DVD blew away the Blu Ray.

Our Borat starts panicking and going "ooooohh. you HAVE to see the blu ray on the Elite. It's not designed for LCD's...." he proceeds to pull the HDMI cable from the HD DVD set, takes it, goes and hooks the Blu Ray up to the Elite as I go back over there. We now have it hooked up on a $5000+ display with much better lighting and still the picture looks slightly better but easily dwarfed by the HD broadcasts going around on the different displays.

Borat for the life of him cannot get over how wonderful the picture is so I ask him to bring over the HD DVD player, hook it up and lets see it. I'll buy a movie, yet still, No go! So Borat finally leaves after another 10mins of trying to sell me the Samsung. In the mean time the Magnolia Rep is still very honest and tries to find me an A1 somewhere. Unfortunately not the case.

So we talk a bit and it turns our that BB has clearly stated that they are to promote Blu Ray due to the high margins. They're also told to NOT play actual movies in the Toshiba and do not directly compare both players.

The highlight: They sold 1 Samsung and it was returned. They have 2 more but have gathered no interest. HD DVD players keep getting inquired about and generally people get quite frustrated about trying to be steered away each time.

__________________________________________________
_________

The alarming thing is that if one of the biggest shops is going to treat HD DVD like this, then it's too much work for word of mouth to spread the news. In SOME positive light, I went to Fry's afterwards and they gave HD DVD the proper treatment so it was in a display room playing Phantom of the Opera and it looked beautiful, coupled with a Samsung flat panel. He told me he had one in stock and I asked for it but then it turns out the sold the last one earlier that day.