do they update those stats daily.....im wondering how they have April 2007 %'s

I'm not a supporter of either format, The way I see it all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are fighting over is who gets the title of being the Next LaserDisc. The way I see it the winner of this new format war isn't going to be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD its going to be Digital Distribution (iTunes, AmazonUnbox and XboxLive MarketPlace).

Physical Media is a dead format, when you are stuck using a physical media your are always going to be limited to how much your can store on it and you will always face having to upgrade every 5 years (or so). Also physical media also has that small little problem of getting damaged and not working any more and when that happens your screwed and have to buy it all over again.
With Digital Distribution you never have to worry about losing your purchased movie, If the file is deleted by mistake you can just re-download it for free. Once you pay for it you'll never have to pay for it again. And with Digital Distribution if a movie ever gets upgraded for better quality its a free upgrade (At least with iTunes).

Now before you say, "why would I use iTunes (or any other digital distributed media) I can't watch them on my HDTV." Not true, Apple now has AppleTV which allows you to watch (and listen) to any media purchased off of iTunes on your HDTV. Microsoft has the Xbox360 which allows you to watch your movies which you have purchased from XboxLive Market Place. And If all else fails their is always MediaCenter PCs which are becoming cheaper every year and support any format you can already watch on your home PC.

Now One may say, Digital Distribution will never take off because people want to own a physical media copy, Well yes there are people out there that want to own a actual disc (or tape) so they feel that they truly own something. The thing is that market doesn't care about HD movies they are perfectly fine with DVDs, Hell most were fine with VHS tapes and have only recently converted over to DVD do to the fact VHS movies are no longer made. The people who want a physical HD media are part of a very small group and are not in the same group as people who are interested in HD movies, The people who want HD movies are excited and accepting digital distribution. The people who still want physical media are a user base who doesn't care about HD Movies.

If you were to look at how well iTunes, AmazonUnbox and XboxLive Media are doing you would see that their movies are vastly outselling that of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray put together. It is currently hard to get the sale figures for Amazon and XboxLive, But Apple is more then willing to post their sale figures.

*Please Note that the iTune Sale Figures are actually 2 months out dated compared to that of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. These were the newest figures I could find at the time I wrote this.

*Also Please Note That I'm aware of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are for just movies. The info came from Video Business but it does say "Total disc sales" so it could be including blank discs and Blu-Ray games.

Digital Distribution is the future, people who fear it most likely have no plans to part ways with their DVDs anyway.

I think you missed my point ...

Currently sales of Blu-Ray enabled PS3 systems is at least half of what Sony would have been projecting when they were approaching movie studios; the number could be less than quarter if you assume Sony was projecting from their earlier Q2 2006 launch date. By the end of 2007 the number of Blu-Ray players that actually have sold could be in the 10%-20% range of what was projected.

If HD-DVD is still selling at 1/2 to 2/3 the sales rate of Blu-Ray there will be studios who are currently exclusively producing products for Blu-Ray that start producing HD-DVD versions of the same movies.

I agree that digital distribution is poised to take much of the fixed media business. I'm just not convinced that internet distribution is capable at this time for distributing HD content. It seems to me that the cable companies are in the drivers seat to deliver VOD because local cable networks have far greater bandwith then the internet ever will. The cable companies can deliver full HD movies in minutes, whereas internet delivery might take hours.

 First. That is movies sold for BluRay, NOT total discs sold. There are well over 1million PS3 games sold. I dont feel like looking up that number.

Sure 675,000 total. But it's selling

Following current sales (not counting new blu-ray units, wich add to the sales) It would put BluRay at over 2million by the end of 2007. (very easily)

While the iTunes video, is aimed at users of the iPod, wich is not in a boom anymore like it was last year. And when it comes to HD video content, I really dont like downloading 10-20gb of video to my HDD to watch one movie, and then have to delete it to watch the next one.

I love digital distribution, But MP3s are diffrent from Video.

1hour of MP3. ~60-90megs.
1hour of 1080p video. 10-15gb.

With my broadband, I would be looking at, at least 13hours if iTunes actually would transfer to me at 300kbps for that whole time.

Let's just say, I love MP3s. But video... no. a 1 hour TV episode in MPEG4, will run you around 300-400megs. This is SD.

Crank it up to HD, and your at 6-7gigs.

You are unlikely to tell a diffrence from a MP3 and CD quality unless you have a very nice sound system, or have nice headphones. And then you can just download it at higher quality, and it would sound just as good.

HDvideo. Is massive. There is a reason HD-DVD is 30gb and BluRay is 50gb. To store the MASSIVE ammounts of data HD video takes. 

FishyJoe - I agree with you for once. 

 If youre making a case of Digital vs. hard ownership you have to include regular DVD sales as well......its not digital vs. BD/HD DVD for the future, if you HONESTLY think that the next jump is going to go from DVD's to a massive terabyte external HD on family entertainment stands that they download movies to through a unified service you are absolutely insane/ignorant.

how many people own PC's? or Ipods.....how many people own BD players or HD DVD players....youre comparing a userbase of probably over 1 billion downloading 1.3 million movies (does this count multiple movies per itunes account) through their PC's to a miniscule userbase with actually more sales (add up HD DVD and BD as the "future" for high-def movie sales)

Youre argueing a few different thing that dont add up.  You want to compare Digital Downloadable media to disk sales, include regular DVD.

And another flaw is its not like PC's or Itunes didnt exist before they released movie content....they had an instilled userbase that was exponentially higher immediately upon introducing the movies as opposed to HD DVD and BD which released their first player in june/april respectively to mass market.

Digital downloads will grow in ease, accessibility....but if you think they will turn into the norm in the next 10 years, it aint happening, its just not.  People dont have the time, knowledge or money to invest in making digital downloading the future of accessing movies, its too large of a jump to something that isnt neccesary.

People with zero technical capabilites are using On Demand movies every day. Since most people have a cable box, they already have all the equipment they need. Soon, DVRs will be a standard feature of cable boxes. The DVR costs are going to be offset from the sales of these downloads. Digital downloading is going to be mainstream, just not from the internet, but from the cable company.

Um....and where am I going to store all my downloaded DRM protected content? On my 2tb. of HDD space? No thanks. That's being used for music, TV, games, and porn. Digital Distribution < Physical Media for HD content. I can take my disks wherever I go, I have to leave my Downloads on my PC or strip them of the DRM and burn them to a disk which defeats the purpose of not having physical media in the first place.

Also, I remember downloading a movie off XBL and it took 18+ hrs. and half my HDD space. I hardly call that On demand. The problem wasn't my download speed either. It's whatever MS has the speeds capped off at. And they aren't even as good quality as their physical media counterparts, they may be 720p but they are still compressed. For rentals I'll stick to my Netflix 3 at a time for $18 a month instead of paying per download. And I get to keep the movie for as long as i need to, it doesn't expire after 24 hours. For purchases I'll stick to my $12-$15 Physical media purchases(including HD) with a case and art, and the option to rip vs. $10-$15 dollar lesser quality downloads that I have to burn to a disk to take and play elsewhere.

For TV I'll stick to my media center server and 360's as extenders.

This is just my opinion, but when it comes to HD movies I would rather purchase physical media uncompressed and have the choice to take it with me, rip it, convert it, etc. vs. having to download a compressed, lesser quality version, that I'll have to buy/use an expensive burner(are there hd/bluray burners and blank disks yet?) and an expensive disk to burn it on.

About the dual sided HD/DVD disks, I think it is a great idea. I can play the hd side on and hd player or if i want to watch movie where there is no hd player available i can watch it in a standard dvd player. Having the choice is great. Blu-ray needs to match that feature.

Nobody is saying downloading will replace physical media. Just that a sizable portion of the market could wind up being downloadable content from the cable companies. Not everyone is a movie collector nor is every movie collectable. In these circumstances, dowloadable content is a convenient, low cost option.

There's a huge issue with digital distribution that's been stated: Size.

 I can goto the store, pick up a DVD and play it at home in 5 minutes. For a BR-DVD or HD-DVD-quality disk to download, it'd take hours upon hours of jamming up my modem to download the same movie...Home bandwidth, even at its best, isn't powerful enough to handle typical 2-3hr HD disks yet, or will in the future.

Digital distribution is GREAT - if your downloading small(er) things from 100mb-5gb or so....But many movie watchers want 1 movie a day or more...That'd tie up lines the entire day for a movie when movies are typically on-demand.

Also, to me, the next issue is the capacity of the drives..To fully use digital media (at this point in time) I'd have to buy a $300 500gb HD then spend the SAME amount of money on the download (because I dont really see any 'breaks' on savings here) vs. not buying a $300 HD and just buying the dang disks.

For games and songs, yes, great thing. Im a HUGE fan of digital distribution, but I don't see it becoming 50/50 with stored disk formats for another 10 years.