Who has the rights to the old Bond films now? A box set would do nicely. I wouldn't buy it, but I know many would.

I'm pretty sure MGM still has all the Bond rights, and therefore Sony.

Well I am one of those many people who likes to preserve their console lasers for "games" not movies.  

"Games", you say? And these consoles you speak of, they "play" them?

Interesting. More research is warranted, methinks...

1. A business does not exist solely to ensure their competition will get better. In fact, most businesses would resent the implication that they should continue to waste their efforts for such a reason. Surely there will be greener pastures for Toshiba to invest in. If they stick with HDDVD for any length of time, it will be because of existing contracts and becauseafter all they've invested in it, they want to wring out every last possible penny they can.

2. Competition from Disney, Fox, Sony, MGM, New Line, Lionsgate, and, eventually, Paramount, Dreamworks and Universal will provide enough reason for the studio to make better discs that take advantage of the format. Please note that DVD never ceased innovating despite a practical monopoly for the past 7 years.

3. Once again, it is the studios who will force BluRay on consumers whether they like it or not, as they are primarily interested in it's ability to thwart pirating (whether it will be as successful as they hope is another matter). Once BR players hit $99, studios can safely stop releasing new films on standard DVD, essentially forcing consumers to make the jump whether they want to or not (in this respect, not all that differnet from video game companies that stop supporting old hardware in order to push players into the next generation).

If a DVD player can last for years, than I don't see why a video game console wouldn't.

The problem is that we've gotten to used to faulty hardware in the video game market. We don't care, and that's why we buy ps2s despite DREs and 360s despite the RRoD. This is all the result of having one hardware manufacturer for each console, so it's the games instead of the hardware itself that decides where are money goes.

I don't understand why "Only 11% of HDTV owners care about HD films." If they didn't care, why did they buy a HDTV?

Supporting blu-ray isn't being a troll, and he isn't lying about anything.  Why are you being so ornery about this? 

 They wanted a high-end model.  They see "40-inch plasma" and think "that's what I want," not even looking at the "HDMI" sticker on the botttom corner of the thing.

People really don't care about HD as much as we like to think.  It really is mostly a function of the industry forcing consumers to purchase technology they don't care one way or the other about.