HD vs. Blu-Ray DVD - out of the ashes of defeat...

If you read my previous two posts (here and here) about the HD vs. Blu-Ray DVD battle, then you know that I had an HD DVD player and a fledgling collection of HD DVDs before HD lost the format war to Blu-Ray.

It turns out, I didn't have to leave the HD versus Blu-Ray field of battle feeling totally defeated. For those of us who put our money on the HD format earlier in the battle, there are a couple of DVD players on the market right now that will play both formats.

Since I just reached another anniversary of my naval career, I also just got a nice bonus check in my bank account. Aside for any of you midshipmen reading this: Don't join the submarine force because someone's luring you in with dollar signs. Join the submarine force because you want to do some really cool tactical stuff on the pointy end of the spear that's important for our national security. Then, enjoy and make good use of the extra money along the way. LW and I don't plan on the bonus in our regular budget. In fact, LW was surprised by the deposit in our bank account this week. When it comes, we'll usually splurge on a couple of things for us and for our church, but we'll put the majority of it in some form of investment. With our pending move back to the mainland in September, we're setting most of this year's bonus aside to help with a downpayment on a house. We decided to go ahead and get a Blu-Ray DVD player though, and I was pleased to find two models that will also play HD DVD as well.

Best Buy had both the Samsung BDUP5000 and the LG BH200 in stock and for the same price even, and I had a 10% off coupon from Best Buy. For the most part, the two seemed to be the same. As I stood there looking at them in Best Buy, LW got on the internet and read the user reviews. Both models had very positive reviews. However, one user pointed out that the Samsung did NOT have Dolby TrueHD. I looked at the specs on the LG model, and it DID have the Dolby TrueHD, so I took it.

So far, we really like it a lot. Friday night for family movie night, we watched National Treasure 2 in Blu-Ray, and it was really good. Then today we watched Night at the Museum in Blu-Ray. NatM in 1080p high-def is AWESOME!

Out of the ashes of defeat... It didn't turn out to be such a big loss after all. I'm putting the HD DVD player up in our bedroom, because it still plays standard DVDs and the HD DVDs we've bought so far. Also, now I won't hesitate to scoop up a bunch of the HD DVDs that Amazon has on sale for like half price.