Going Purple

Well Christmas came and went and I find myself not only going purple but enjoying it. For those of you not fascinated with the world of High Definition DVD you might not know what this means. When Hi-Def DVD came out a few years back there was 2 camps, the HD-DVD(which came in red cases and although they use the red laser lines like traditional DVDs, they also use the blue-violet lasers to allow for the High Definition) & the Blu-ray by sony,(which came in blue cases and does the same as HD-DVD but with more room available on their disks). Most people chose a side and they were then a member of the "red" team or the "blu" team.

I waited until early this year when HD-DVD made a bold push and lowered prices and offered a huge free HD-DVD incentive, and purchesed my first system. It was great and everything I read said this was a good choice. Although Sony only provided movies for Blu-ray; Universal, Paramount and Warner Brothers still produced HD-DVDs. If you have a High Def player you can upconvert all your standard DVDs to "like" HD quality. So many of the Sony's I already had looked fine even if they weren't true HD copies. Then the evil empire, Sony, made a move to crush Toshiba and the HD-DVD line. They offered a bunch of cash to Warner Brothers to be exclusive Blu-Ray providers. At the time there were 2 exclusives on each side with Warner Brothers doing both, however, Warners Brothers did more in HD-DVD and preferred the format(especially since they helped perfect the technology). Another arguement is that a continued war between the two formats would end in both loosing, which is a good arguement as well, but we all know money pushed this deal through.

Toshiba cut it's loses and said no more, the other studios joined Warner Brothers and by April of 2008 no more real HD-DVDs were being made. This was ok because of the fire sales and the hope the Blu-ray would maybe come down in price, which it didn't at first. Enter a bad economy and Black Friday. Walmart has a decent Blu-Ray player for under $130, so I decide I want to get one now. I'll fight through the nonsense I've read about Blu-ray and get the new movies coming out that deserve a High Definition showing, ie Iron Man and Batman: Dark Knight.

I opened it a few days before Christmas. I was blown away...not just the picture but the sound was amazing. I watched Iron Man, Dark Knight, and Kingdom of Heaven and all 3 just sound like you are in the middle of the action. I love my HD-DVD player and movies but after 2 weeks I already have 11 Blu-rays and they all look and sound great. So no longer am I a supporter of red and I've never been on a soap box for Blu, nope now I am purple because I love them both.