You just got a true 1080 (whatever) HD TV and man! You DVD movies have never looked better. You were more than likely pretty satisfied until you saw your picture in true HD. Now DVD looks like 1980’s VHS copies to you. Blueray looks like a pretty good option, but you’ve already got a couple of hundred movies on DVD and the thought of starting over in a new format is a little grating. The answer might be in HD DVD.

There is a lot of talk on the market and on the showroom floor about HD DVD and what it does for you. The basics of these conversations go down like this: HD quality picture through the use of a better, more accurate DVD player than can utilize your old DVDs. The advantage is that you 1) don’t have to buy a Blue-Ray player and 2) you don’t have to buy all new movies to replace the ones you have. Both are sound arguments and a little flawed.

While it is true that no player will make your DVD look as good as HD picture, you can play your old DVDs on your HD player without adapters or having to change players or input settings on your TV. This is a plus because I am on a one man mission to help cut down on the number of remote controls next to my Lay-Z-Boy. So in plain English; Standard DVDs work in HD DVD players.

HD DVD players use what is called a blue laser. I assume it’s called that because the laser is blue. I don’t know this for sure because the sticker says I shouldn’t be looking at it. Let’s just go on the assumption that the manufacturers were telling the truth and the laser is indeed blue. A blue laser has a short wavelength than a red one, this means more content can be held on the disc and the load times will be fast. Hey! Both are great things.

An HD DVD player will save you some space in the entertainment center as well. With only one player under the TV instead of two or three, this kind of cuts down on the space you will be taking up. It’s bad enough having to buy something new, it’s even worse when that new thing just adds to the clutter a lot of people have.

Another space saver comes from the fact that HD DVDs come in the same packaging as normal DVDs. This makes your movie shelf look more uniform and prevents you from having to store movies on different shelves. For those with OCD this helps some.

HD DVD players don’t sell for as high as blu-ray players generally do. Thank marketing wars and formatting non-conferences between Microsoft and the blu-ray guys for that. Still with the “B” word being the buzzword on the showroom floor, HD DVD players are priced to move, which is good for us.

The real plus to it all is that you don’t have to start over on your collection and you can keep one basic unit beneath your TV instead of two, three of four different boxes. For we older people who remember the betamax/vhs wars if the early 80s there is the added comfort of knowing we don’t have to completely switch formats again or hope we guessed which was going to become the standard.

Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on 7 Inch LCD TV which reviews and lists the best LCD TVs to help you pick the best one for your needs.