Can you play an HD DVD in a Blu-ray player?

The introduction of high definition discs saw two formats launched. Bluray is one and HD DVD was the other. The format war was won by the Bluray system and HD DVD was withdrawn in 2009.

Both Bluray and HD DVD are high definition players but note that "HD DVD" is the name of the format and is confusingly close to the generic description of high definition disc players.

Bluray and HD DVD are not compatible so a disc of one type will not play on the other format. There are a handful of dual format disc players but they were expensive and few were sold. If you have HD DVD discs then you need to hand on to an HD DVD player if you want to watch them. All high definition discs on sale now are Bluray and of course will need a Bluray player to play them.