Venturer HD-DVD Player with 2 Random HD-DVD Movies

Also fyi you can get Planet earth and Heroes Season 1 for 9.40 each at borders right now add something to get your order up to 25$ and you get free shipping.

Too bad HD-DVD went to shit.

Might be worth it for the parts. (Laser, motors, etc.) You could use the movies as frisbees!

Lots of HD-DVD on Amazon for $7.95

I bought one of these a few times back… Its a nice machine and for the price, upconverting aint so bad…

The stale jokes about Betamax are off the mark. While Betamax could not play VHS tapes (and vice versa), any HD DVD player can play standard DVDs and upconvert them to HDMI output. I have one of these Venturers and it looks great on my 720p LCD television. Haven’t had the chance to try out 1080i; this model doesn’t do 1080p.

HD DVD did lose the format war to Blu-Ray so there will be no new HD DVD releases. On the other hand, fantastic deals for HD DVD movies and TV shows abound on sites like Amazon, DeepDiscount.com, and others. Some examples:

  • all three Matrix movies in a set for $20
  • Battlestar Galactica Season One for $15
  • Batman Begins for $10

If you look at this Woot as an upconverting DVD player with HDMI output it’s a reasonable deal. If you throw in the fact that it can play HD DVD discs in high definition and that HD DVD content can be had cheap (although selection is limited) then the deal looks better. If you can live with the notion that your HD DVD discs will be orphaned the day your player dies then I’d suggest grabbing one of these Venturers. It’s a good way to experiment with high def inexpensively while waiting for Blu-Ray prices to come down.

Some HD DVD discs are sold as “combo” format: HD DVD on one side, standard DVD on the other. Unfortunately, very few movies were released this way.

I recently hooked up my Venturer to the home network and the player updated its firmware from 1.3 to 4.0 (the latest from Toshiba).

In for one as a backup to the Venturer I Wooted a couple of months back…

Yeah, but what are you going to do with all of them when your player dies in 2 years? At least DVD is universally supported.

Blu-ray will be universally supported…so even when blu-ray is obsolete…you’ll still be able to find a player to play your old blu-ray’s and DVD’s.

you could buy 3 and get all of the DVDs… oh wait it’s woot… random means get the same dvd… hell who couldn’t use 6 copies of the perfect storm.

I have this and have to say that the picture quality difference between DVD upconverted to 720p and HDDVD downconverted to 720p is noticeable but small.
I’m guessing “upconverted DVD” may end up winning the HD format war in a stunning upset.

1 2 Random HD-DVD Movies?

I get 6 copies of Perfect Storm and 6 copies of Firewall?

(or .6 of each?)

Both are depressing…

/nitpick

So I guess if you buy this and a bunch of movies when it breaks you can spend your time reading the movie boxes since next year you wont find any more players. Sorry Woot no go

I can put this with my old analog TV’s in Feb!

Also, I can take it apart and get a cheap blue laser.

No reviews yet, but here’s the Alatest link…
http://alatest.com/reviews/dvd-player-reviews/venturer-shd7000/po3-53395056,32/

If you have X BOX - you can still play HD DVD???

I snagged one at the wootoff on the 20th. Let me tell you how great it is. The bright, bold colors, the crisp detail, the cool movies. Oh wait, I haven’t got it yet. That’s okay, it has only been 10 friggin’ days!

Any chance these units play divx, xvid, mp3s or even .jpg slideshow?

My standard questions… What movies are out on HD-DVD that are still not out on BluRay? Also, how does it compare with a Oppo upconverting DVD player?

1080i? harr!

However, :thumbsup: to HD DVD; I have over 140 HD discs, and they look most-awesome in 1080p, and (as others have mentioned) they can be had for under $10…some under $5 if u know where to look:

Blew-Ray indeed…ha!

The Matrix Trilogy was the main one/set b4 those were released on BD in November.

However the main thing that should raise your eyebrow is that HD DVD’s look BETTER in 1080p than Blew-Raye (I have “Total Recall” in both formats, and there’s no question as to which looks better), AND they are multi-regional/region-free. I’m sure that helped lead to its demise in the hi-def disc “war”…flying spaghetti monster forbid consumers should be free of some corporate control over what u can watch in a particular part of the world.

Well, you could buy 3 and have HD-DVD for three times as long. Or, if it hasn’t been done already, maybe somebody will create an HD-DVD ripper and you can at least save the movies.

I got 4 of these so far, one for each room of the house and one for my mothers RV. It is a great price for a upconverting DVD player that will also play cheap HD-DVD’s.

That is how you need to look at it. If you are in the market to build a High Def library this is NOT the player or format, but if you want a damn good upconverting DVD player cheap this is the player for you. I tell you, regular DVD’s look damn near HD on my 50" plasma with this player.

I also bought a bunch of HD-DVD movies at Fry’s and other online retailers, mainly classics at a price cheaper than DVD and look as good as Blu-Ray.

Sure I won’t get new movies in HD with this player but I think new movies suck anyways, have they made a movie within the last 10 years as good as Robocop? Not in my opinion.