I think some people are becoming confused.

Sure, competition is great, and has been greatly beneficial to the HD video market thus far. It drives prices down faster, enables better features and overall quality.

But we've seen that already. Prices have already plummeted (This time last year BD players were still around $1000), and new features have already been announced and put out by both formats.
Now, the only thing competition is doing is limiting sales. The general public does not want, and never will want, two competing formats. People have been holding off their purchases because they don't want to invest their money on something that may or may not even be around in a year or two. The faster HD-DVD dies now, the bigger the HD market will become, and the happier the movie studios will be.

And as far as digital distribution goes, don't kid yourselves. I download music and video quite regularly myself, although owning a physical property has always been my preference.
But if you think digital distribution of movies will become the norm anytime soon, then think again. There are too many cons to digital movies right now, and although we will eventually see most people go that route, it won't be anytime soon.

Let's be honest: You only want this to happen because you still think HD-DVD can win. It's as simple as that.

@Quickdraw McGraw

As long as Blu-Ray stabilizes as the dominant format ABOVE mass-market prices, the consumer loses out. HD DVD has reached mass-market in many cases, but it cannot from this point become anything more than a surviving format at best. What we, the consumer, need is for HD DVD to survive long enough to force Blu-Ray manufacturers to mass-market prices. Remember that the whole reason for a move to high-def from a manufacturers point of view was to charge higher prices for players (a motive that was disrupted by the emergence of two formats). The LAST thing that consumers need is for Blu-Ray manufacturers to still have an opportunity to profiteer for a year or two.

HD DVD needs to stick around for another year or two to force Blu-Ray players down in price to benefit consumers, and to lower the price of the PS3 at a faster rate (this may not be good for Sony, but I don't get why PS3 fanboys don't like the idea as it would mean developers pay more attention to your system).

Judging by your history as a *fairly* delusional Sony fanboy poster, I'd say that kind of stupid belief would be more inherant to your personality than to mine. Wouldn't you agree?

I would say that competition from regular DVDs ought to be enough imperative to lower the cost of Blu-ray players and media, along with any other distribution methods.

Furthermore, Blu-ray prices would probably come down faster if it was the only HD format, simply due to economies of scale. A bigger Blu-ray market means cheaper manufacturing costs.

This is coming from somebody who has no intention of buying into HD until the players are about $100 and the discs are about $20. The format change is something I recognize that I'll have to accept eventually but not something that I find worth looking forward to.

I'm rooting against Blu-Ray just because i don't like Sony.

But then again I'm pro-apple but apple is supporting blu ray.

But then again I'm also anti-microsoft and they're supporting HD-DVD.

I'M SO CONFUSED

Simply not true. Competing standards dont bring down prices. Competing products do. The moment one standard is the winner sales will pick up because customers aren't confused anymore and player and media will get cheaper. Simple economies of scale. The competition will be between panasonic, Sony, cheap Chinese players etc. So a quick death to hddvd would be best for customers

If HD DVD would remain in the fight the result would be that BOTH formats will die out without reaching mass market. The reason why stand-alone Blu-ray players are expensive is because almost no-one buys them. Most models sell around 1000-5000 WW and some even less than that. Most consumers simply wait until unified format. If there won't be unified format they will simply keep their DVD's and skip HD formats altogether. Of course if dual format players become affordable, consumers will simply buy them instead.

Just think, DVD is a unified format and DVD players are very cheap now. DVD players too were very expensive for several years because there was no mass production. PS2 did drop the prices of DVD players because it was one of the cheapest DVD players at the time but first DVD players came out years before PS2 was even released. First DVD players were released as early as march 1997. Here is link about history of the DVD:

http://www.e-articles.info/e/a/title/DVD-History/

Well given that every major set of blu-ray price cuts has been preceded by Toshiba HD DVD cuts.......

Of course competition with DVD will have an effect, and of course economies of scale matter, but there is no way to deny that competition with HD DVD has been forcing Blu-Ray prices down.

And this goes to my earlier point, backed up by what LordofthenightKnight was saying in other threads. Blu-ray is NOT mass market yet. Sales will NOT suddenly explode because of the exit of HD DVD, not until Blu-Ray is at mass-market prices. Large economies of scale wont be reached until this point, so competition with HD DVD remains a much greater imperative to lower prices.

At the end of the day, HD DVD's continued existence, at least for a while, is one more reason for a drop in the PS3's price, and that works well for me.