HD DVD question.

[HntnFsh]

The wife and I got the Planet Earth series in hd for Christmas.

We went to Sears today to buy a dvd player and the salesman told us that to watch an HD dvd you have to have an HD dvd Player.He said a regular dvd player wouldnt even play it.Does that sound right?

My thought was that,a regular player would play it,but just in regular format.

Any body know what the real scoop is.

We dont have an hd tv so I dont see the sense in paying the extra dough for an Hd dvd player if we dont have to.

Thanks a bunch.
HntnFsh

[bighoof]

A buddy just bought PS3 that plays blu-ray and it will play regular dvd's. Don't know about the hd dvd, but I'd guess that it will play regular dvd's too.

[lor]

Welcome to a big mess.
I believe what the salesman told you is correct.
I don't own a HD anything, but do video work for my church and on the side.

I call it a mess because right now, there is a format war going on with High Definition DVD's. One camp prefers Blu-Ray, the other HD-DVD, we as the customers will get squeezed in the middle because until someone creates a player which supports both formats, you will need to carefully buy one or the other depending on which solution has programming your interested in seeing. This is similar to the issue 30 years ago between BetaMax and VHS.

[Reelentless]

Originally Posted by HntnFsh

The wife and I got the Planet Earth series in hd for Christmas.

We went to Sears today to buy a dvd player and the salesman told us that to watch an HD dvd you have to have an HD dvd Player.He said a regular dvd player wouldnt even play it.Does that sound right?

My thought was that,a regular player would play it,but just in regular format.

Any body know what the real scoop is.

We dont have an hd tv so I dont see the sense in paying the extra dough for an Hd dvd player if we dont have to.

Thanks a bunch.
HntnFsh

Nope. The salesman is right. A regular DVD player wont read an HD DVD.

[Joe C]

The good news is that you can get hd dvd players as low as 100 bucks on sale these days, and they will also upconvert your old dvds to a hd signal which makes a pretty huge difference IMO.

Of course none of this matters if you don't have a HDTV to start with. Do you plan on buying one in the near future? If not, I'd just re-gift it to someone with a hd dvd player.