Okay, so you bet on the wrong horse. You early-adopted HD DVD. It was cheaper. It was attractive. It had a nice ring to it — it’s not DVD, it’s HD DVD. I mean, when has Sony ever won a format war? MiniDisc? Bah. No way Blu-ray will ever win this format war.

And you were dead ass wrong.

Don’t fret if you’re stuck with 30 HD DVD discs as you rush to be a good consumer and begin to consume Blu-ray discs. There are still a few options out there that will let you play with both.

The LG BH200 is one of those options, and if you’re looking for DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray playback, it’s one of the best.

The BH200 puts out an amazing picture over HDMI and Component Video, and it upconverts DVD’s — and yes, they do look better.

The problem is that looks aren’t everything, and the BH200 is bad at optical audio output, failing to send a proper DTS signal for Blu-ray and failing to send either a DTS or Dolby Digital signal over optical audio out for some DVD’s that I tested.

The unit also has Ethernet built in, but you can’t upgrade the firmware over the Internet. Doh.

Lastly, the product takes as much time to power up as a desktop PC. When I press the eject button on my video player, I want it to spit out the disc, not turn on, boot up, load, load, load and then eject the disc over a minute later.

Basically, it’s like this — if you use HDMI for video AND audio and you need to play every format available, the new low price of the BH200 is attractive.

But HD DVD is dead, and this player might have come on the market a tad too late.

About The Author

John Guilfoil is the editor-in-chief of Blast: Boston's Online Magazine and the Blast Magazine Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Tweet @johnguilfoil.

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