I knew people that kept their Betamax players and movies for a long, long time. They still worked. For one example, I knew someone that had the Star Wars trilogy on Betamax and would dust off the player every year or so to watch them probably up until three or four years ago.
One thing that puzzles me is how people are acting as if HD DVD players are now set to blow up in two weeks or something with all the talk about useless collections, etc. The things will continue to work for many, many years. Picking up a cheap extra player or two when the fire sales hit will ensure you can play them forever.
If had an HD DVD player and a significant numbers of discs, I'd certainly certainly stop buying more HD DVDs, but I don't think I'd panic like some people are. The aintitcool guy was talking about how he had hundreds of HD DVDs so he's "out" all of that money. Unless he absolutely can't find room on his rack (give me a break), there's nothing stopping him from continuing to enjoy those discs indefinitely.
Hopefully when the dust settles and HD DVD is truly dead (no more discs being made) some companies will make some nice Blu-ray players that support HD DVD playback for those that had collections, similar to how some DVD players (such as Panasonic) support Video CD playback even though that format is dead.
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