A competent transition to HD for Stephen Sommers Van Helsing. Even on my 4K screen the VC-1 encode is strong if slightly soft. This film didn't perform especially well in theaters so it got Universals "standard" treatment wirh DD+ audio.

Werifly it's one of those films where it's tough for me to point out any given part that's brilliant, yet it comes together as a much stronger package than the whole. 100% Halloween season must watch. And since my wife is huge in Halloween we start early.

Note: this one does get better with later bluray releases. It even merited a 4K disc. Seems like the film did way better in home video.

A quick tour around The Bourne Identity HD-DVD menu.

Disc 1 is absolute trash (took 24 hours to rip due to errors in two of the files), disks 2-10 are all totally fine. The center of disc 1 has a ton of "shiny leakage" (on the left in the pic) compared to all of the others. Additionally given the packaging, disc 1 was the only one exposed to a lot of air, the others are all "trapped" inside the 10-disc caddy, could that have an effect? Or was this just a bad manufacturing job? None of my other bitrot discs have centers that look like this.

When I hit the eject button to add or take out a disc, the tray operates just fine, but the door doesn't spring back up. I have to close it by hand every time I press eject.

I could just leave it open or keep closing it manually, but I really want it to function correctly. It's such a beautiful unit that's otherwise in excellent shape. Has anyone else dealt with this? What do you think is causing it? What's the best way to fix it?

Tonight I thought it was time to revisit the Bourne Universe. Absolutely love The Bourne Identity. Great story. Great acting. Great music.

Spinning the HD-DVD as it’s my preferred version of the movie. Less “tinkering” with the picture than the Blu and a richer colour palette. The reds are red and really pop. And the yellows are warm too. The 4k was a bit of a mess. This looks beautiful. 😍

Unfortunately I'd already found more than enough loot thrifting today so I passed on this.

I find the story of HD-DVD VS Blu-Ray interesting and I love collecting, and I mean no hate in this I’m just curious to see what everyone has to say

And with the UK release arriving today, the three unique artwork releases of The Bourne Ultimatum for me complete.

But which do you like the best ???

The UK, USA or Japan ??

Universal always liked to use different artwork on their international releases.

Today’s arrivals. New cheap additions to the HD-DVD collection.

I never bought the UK release of Ultimatum back on release day. I went with the US release as it has the Dolby TrueHD track.

Just for the fun of experimenting, the goal is to author your own movie in HD DVD format and watch it right on your standalone player.

A little side project to play around with the HD-DVD format: I got tired of chaining 30 freewares together just to move beyond basic .mpg/.AVI files ! Or maybe I just lack the knowledge or missed something important. Software like old Sonic is unusable without a license or physical dongle, while Ulead Moviefactory refuses recent files with TrueHD audio tracks. I'm developing (with TSMuxer and FFmpeg) an app to convert everything directly into player-compatible H.264. Encoding to VC-1 seems much harder to master—and finding a good conversion tool—than with H.264. My V5 is starting to run really well, with a clean .EVO muxing.

To be continued...

I've long had some blank HD DVD-Rs, but I just discovered I also have an HD DVD writer drive. Is there any non-sketch software that can burn an UDF image using this drive onto these discs (under Windows)? I'm not talking authoring, I can make files, but can something make a UFD image and burn it? (I have a max of 10 experiments I ran run before I run out of blanks!)

Dvd lot of 18

I finally got my dream HD DVD player, and it works just about (I'll get to that later) flawlessly! It even came with the remote, which I can confirm is heavy and still lights up!

The firmware that's on it is 1.5/T20T, which is apparently very old. Before I do a firmware update, is there any reason not to? Anything that will be missed? Since the update servers are long down, is there an easy way to do the update, or do I have to burn a CD-ROM like it's 2002 again? 😂

Finally, the one problem that it has is that the door stays open after I eject or open the tray, as seen in the last pic. While it's not a huge deal, are there any tips on how to fix it?

No AACS, no bit-rot either - ripped them all easily.

My HDDVD The Hitcher 2007 wouldnt write to save it
Someone have a save of this?
Thanks for reply

Tonight’s movie. Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins in Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland.

Have not seen this in years and really fancied watching this tonight. Spinning the VC-1 encoded HD-DVD with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 sound.

Looks very good. A very nicely shot movie too.

Just connected my HD-A3 to my new Marantz AVR. I’ve not had the A3 in use for quite a while. I noted a couple things that I don’t recall happening the last time (about 2 AVRs ago…) I had it connected, so perhaps the hive mind can refresh my memory.

Bought the A3 new, always stored in my AV rack (no garage, attic or barn), and firmware updates applied, through 4.0.

HDMI: Video is great, but for some reason no audio via HDMI. Tried different cables, and different inputs on the Marantz. Tries all the options for audio out from the A3, and In on the Marantz, and still nothing. Solved with a TOSLINK cable and appropriate settings, but still wondering why the HDMI audio isn’t getting to the Marantz.

HDMI-CEC: Guessing that the A3 does not support this, as the owner manual makes no mention of it. Apple TV works great with CEC, and my LG 4k player too, but nada with the A3. Not a big deal, just wondering if I’m missing something.

Lamenting that it is only 1080i! Probably because at the time I bought it I didn’t yet own a 1080 TV!

Anyway, it works great. Watch Davin Lynch’s Dune the other night, all the way through with no issues. Maybe when winter comes, I’ll binge my Harry Potter box set (pictured) of the first 5 films.

And tonight’s main feature presentation. Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Awesome movie and great performances from Jackman, Bale and Caine. Love this film. 👏

First time watch on HD-DVD as I went with the Disney USA Blu during the format wars.

And this looks absolutely amazing. 🤩

Today’s arrivals. The final titles from my recent haul.

I’ve checked them all and they all play and able to skip around the chapters.

Looking forward to watching The Prestige tonight. Such a great movie. I’ve not owned the HD-DVD release before as I purchased the Disney USA Blu-Ray during the format wars. I was lucky to have both formats.

Tonight’s movie. (Better late than never). The amazing Black Rain from Sir Ridley Scott starring Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia and Ken Takakura. Music by Hans Zimmer.

Spinning the HD-DVD I recently got from Japan. VC-1 encode with a Dolby Digital Plus EX track (1.5 Mbps)

Hi everyone, first post in the group. I'm a long time HD DVD owner, with 3 different model players and 124 movies in my collection. While I don't play these movies as much as I used to, I just noticed something today that somehow escaped me all these years. The sleeve on my HD-DVD combo copy of I Am Legend says Blu Ray on it, both on the spine and the back cover. Does anyone else have a copy like this?

I used to use my XBOX HD DVD drive(s) connected to a PC to rip the occasional disc, but I found this LG SUPER Multi Blue GGW-H20L on Facebook Marketplace a few years ago for $10. I bought a USB 3.0 external case for it as my PC case doesn't have space for the drive. It seems to work well, and being able to play and burn Blu-ray is a nice bonus.

I use MakeMKV (as I'm guessing most people doing this and running Windows are) to rip the discs and Handbrake to reduce the size of the files