HD Conversion plays HD DVD

[Buster65]

Can someone tell me whether a new HD conversion DVD player will play HD DVDs or am I now completely screwed.

I don't want to buy a Blu Ray yet and a combo player is ridiculously overpriced; aren't the conversion players the same as the HD players only renamed because HD DVD lost the war to blu ray?

[admin]

Unfortunately, that's not the case. HD conversion/upconversion players only play DVDs, except they use internal processing to upscale the picture to HD resolution (which makes DVDs look about 70-80% of the quality of real HD pictures, such as HD DVD or Blu-ray).

On the other hand, all Blu-ray and HD DVD players are also DVD upconverters, but the quality of upconversion is generally poor compared to dedicated DVD upconverters.

If you now have some HD DVD movies, then you will need to buy a HD DVD player, which may be harder and harder to find these days (and more pricey due to the rarity of it). If you have a Xbox 360, then you could also get the HD DVD add-on drive for it and then it will allow the 360 to play HD DVDs, which apart from the noise, plays it very decently. Check eBay for some deals on this and standalone players, because some of the prices there are still very attractive (there is a HD-D2, which is the A2 but sold from Wal-mart, for only $50 there - that's great value!).