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How to Convert Your HD-DVD Discs to Blu-Ray
eldavojohn writes "Are you one of the few who boarded the HD-DVD Titanic ship headed to the bottom of ocean to join BetaMax? Fret no longer, friend, simply convert those and pretend like you never invested in the wrong technology! All you need is a Windows machine with a fast processor, an HD-DVD drive, a Blu-Ray burner, 30GB of free disk space, at least, though 40GB or more is recommended and an internet connection to download the software! Or you can sit and be the crazy guy who continues to argue that HD-DVD is the superior technology whether it's true or not."
From newegg.com:
HD-DVD drive: US$149.99
Blu-ray DVD burner: US$259.99
Blu-ray DVD: 1xUS$13.99
To a grand total of US$423.97
unless you want to burn more than one DVD. Seems a bit much.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Or just keep the HD-DVD player? Is that an option?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Or just keep the HD-DVD player? Is that an option?
Well, sure. Do nothing is always an option. But I thought the topic was about converting, and if not Blu-Ray, then to a format that one can deal with later.
Some might want Blu-Ray versions instead for different special features, for the better menuing/title system, or just for the higher maximum bitrates (quality).
I suppose the thread could also be re-done as "How to convert to Blu-Ray if that title is not available in Blu-Ray format" but of all the titles I've seen, I don't think this will be a problem (take that as you wish).
LG GGW-H20L
It's only one drive, so you'd have to rip & reburn.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Given the cost of blank media (not to mention the burners), it doesn't make sense to convert your HDDVDs to BluRay. Assuming you have a computer connected to your TV, I'd propose instead ripping the DVDs to a HD (or storage array). You can connect a 360 HDDVD drive to a computer and do this.
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You can get a 500GB disk for ~$100. This will hold ~25 movies and will probably provide a superior playback experience (i.e. no need to swap out disks).
Eventually HD prices as well as BluRay optical media prices will drop
Evolution: love it or leave it
Blu Ray supports 9 & 4.7 Gb DVDs with the proper disc structure. So in theory you could transcode an HD DVD to a DVD. Quality wouldn't be as good as the original but its probably watchable. Alternative just store the movie data on a removable USB drive and watch it on a PS3.
Skip the BD-Rs, skip the Blu-ray burner, keep the image in HD DVD format and put it on your media server.
Amazon lists 566 HD DVD titles. Many of them are duplicates of others bundled in box sets, some are hybrids with a reduced capacity, a lot are pre-orders and many are presumed future release not available for pre-order. But let's assume single-disk single-side dual-layer HD DVD content on average and they're all full at 30 GB each, that's 16,980 GB. At current prices of 1 GB for 20 cents (sometimes less), to get drives to hold that library with no redundancy would cost only US$3,396, not counting interfaces, cables, and power necessary to build the 17 TB striped RAID. Some people pay that nearly that much for a whole computer. Might as well throw in another $200 TB for overhead and database with cover images, manual scans, and software.
For the adventurous, format the 17 TB RAID as UDF 2.5 and remaster the whole collection as if it were one huge HD DVD, masquerading as a drive, with just a USB, ATA, or eSATA interface to the outside and plug it into a standalone player's motherboard or into an XBOX 360.
(All capacities assumed to be metric.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The hum occurs because of an amplified ground loop.
This reminds me about my first amplifier building project I did when I was 14. The first approach was a combined pre-amplifier and power amplifier.
To get rid of the hum I tried to install several anti-hum loops that should counteract the hum induced by hum-loops.
This succeeded quite well, and I was finally quite pleased with the sound, for a short while... I couldn't understand why it still used so much power and turned hot despite I wasn't playing. When I checked with the oscilloscope I noticed a high amplitude high frequency oscillation. After a short while both power amplifiers self destructed. Now I also understood the reason for some capacitors I had skipped... because those would decrease the bandwidth...
After that I realized that it's quite hard to put both pre- and power ampliefier in the same box due to hum and I built new power amplifiers in a separate box, and I could remove the anti hum loops.
Professor_UNIX wrote and included with a post:
To me, more government involvement is what is not needed. It has the potential to lead to mandatory upgrading, and making the use of old formats eventually illegal.
It is only a short distance from a voluntary (the government will provide help to make the transition easier) move to a new format, to a government-mandated (you do it when we say or you won't get any reimbursement) move to a new format. This, combined with the ability to create new formats that can be made unusable at a later date, is of great concern.
I think that it is the consumer that has power to end future format wars via their refusal to support any of the involved formats. The consumers have the power to make it clear to the media companies that if you cause a format war, we won't support either format, we will wait until one format dies. Based on some of the posts I've seen in Slashdot, in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war it seems like many people did just that (including me).