Tragically Ironic: HD DVD

[Josh]

I'm sure most remember how the HD DVD Promotional Group touted how HD DVD was a great product name because consumers are familiar with DVD. Despite the fact that a disc can't technically be high definition (its just a piece of plastic) and it wasn't a DVD (it uses a different laser), the name was seen as a promising marketing tool for the format.

As the war came to a close, Toshiba started branding their soon-to-be useless players as "upconverting DVD players" to entice consumers to purchase the players for their DVD qualities. Now that the war is over, they are only being sold as cheap upconverting DVD players:

DVD Player with High Definition Upconversion

Okay, but no one says "high definition". Acronyms are the hottest things since Reebok Pumps! Let's clean that up a bit:

DVD Player with HD Upconversion

Much better . But you know what really bothers me? Verbs that think they are nouns. A car may be "drivable", but I prefer "driving a car". Let's put that verb back in there:

DVD Player with HD Upconverting

But you know what, I really don't care what the player does, I just want to know what it is! I know my pen has a "writing" feature and my computer has a "processing" function. I don't need that in the title. Let's clean it up a bit more:

DVD Player with HD

Much better! But you know what, even Google will drop connective words like "with". They are too common to give a unique result. This is the age of Google, so let's get rid of that "with":

DVD Player HD

Wait a second... that look awfully familiar. Hmm... What happens if I move that HD to the front, to get consumers' attention?

HD DVD Player

Yipes! It was meant to be an DVD Player with HD Upconversion the entire time!