hd-dvd sucks

CNET has posted an good read on the many ways HD-DVD has failed to impress. Take a peek…

More exciting news for HD…the first batch of HD players to come out won’t support Mandatory Managed Copy. No one knows yet how well MMC will work, if all movies will in fact allow it, what it will cost you to make your “mandatory” copies, what you will be able to do with these copies, but I do think it’s an important feature to have if you’re going to drop $1k on a shiny new player. If you must jump on the bandwagon, this is yet another reason to wait for the dust to settle.

Warner Studios, who is supposedly going to be the first studio to release movies on HD-DVD, has delayed their first releases by three weeks from March 28 to April 18. Toshiba has said they are likely to delay the release of their players to match the launch of the first content, though they haven’t officially announced it yet. Also, Toshiba is apparently only shipping 10,000 total HD-DVD players for its intial launch, indicating they aren’t exactly expecting crazy sales. Of course, with only three movies at launch, it shouldn’t be too unbelievable.

HD-DVD’s first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray is getting smaller and smaller, and now looks like they’ll beat Blu-ray to market by only one month. (Blu-ray is currently scheduled to launch May 23). This is unfortunate because if I had to choose between HD-DVD or Blu-ray, I would take HD-DVD any day of the week. I mean, considering all the crap Sony has pulled, I just don’t care for them anymore.