Now that Toshiba have announced that manufacturing of HD-DVD players will end this month the future of HD-DVD is unknown.

Amazon have slashed the price of hundreds of HD-DVD titles, so much so that for a while some titles were at the top of the Amazon bestseller list! This suggests to me that the only reason it has not been a success so far is because it was over priced.

What we really need is more dual-format players that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

I’m sure that there will be healthy market for HD DVD movies for years to come, after all there are lots of people who spent lots of money on the players and they wont just go away.

I was in Tachileik (Myanmar formerly known as Burma) the other day and I saw a range of what looked like Blu-Ray movies.  On closer inspection they are no Blu-Ray at all, neither are they HDDVD, no..these are HD-Disk!

Just about everything in Tachileik comes from the Chinese border which is only about 150km away, without exception every DVD or Music CD on sale in the town is counterfeit, but the police in Myanmar appear not to care at all as hundreds of shops openly sell counterfeit goods such as copy handbags, copy shirts, copy DVDs and copy CDs in their thousands.

Knowing this to be counterfeit I bought a couple anyway in order to see what they are and how (or if) they work.

I put one in my Mac and I was surprised to see that it played OK using quicktime (though it prompted me to download an add-on codec first), it’s full 1080p High Definition and using a HDMI to DVI cable I can hook my macbook pro up to the TV, the results are impressive to say the least.

The second movie is in a .ts format and would not play on my Mac, but it played on a PC no problem.

The back of the box has the following text (spelling errors included):

“Compared with Blue-Ray and HD DVD, HD DISK provide  you the same qulity and pristine picture in a easy and convient way!   HD DISK not only for Home Theater Personal Computer users, a various of HD players,Media Box, can also play it smoothly.  HD DISK delivers the greatest high-definition programs up to 1080p in all kinds of formats: MPED2-TS/TP, WMVHD, H264, XVID/DIVX…”

Further down the back of the box it describes 3 HD player devices that are compatible, they are:

• IPHD-DVD made in China
• HD Media Box made in Korea
• HD Player made in Europe

It’s worth mentioning here that the actual media is just a normal dual layer pressed DVD.

I spent a couple of hours this week looking at lots of portable DVD players in MBK shopping center in Bangkok. I decided a while ago that despite their higher price than the nameless clones, Sony seem to be making the best of the portable players.

Sony have just released the DVP-FX850 which looks to be the one to beat.

Spec includes a 8 Inch, 180 degree swivel screen, USB port to allow viewing of photos on a usb stick or playback of MP3 files ona memory stick. The player is described as being compatible with DivX format but it’s not clear if you can play movies that are on a USB stick.
The battery is described as 6 hour. I have failed to be impressed in the past with Sony’s description of battery life vs real world use, but even if makes it to 5 hours that’s not bad.

Included is a nice little credit card sized remote control.

I reckon this is the nicest portable DVD player that I have seen, but I’m at a loss to why Sony could not include a couple of card readers and allow support for playback from them, that should result in better battery life too. For now, it’s my top choice. The Sony feels like a quality bit of kit and for my money it’s the one to have.