@ your mother

First. I'm not arguing. Second. I think your belief about long live of standard DVD is totally wrong. Sure right now it dominate but soon (2 years) it will be as outdated as VHS before. 

But anyhow, you could be right; in two years DVD may be supplanted by another format. It may take longer. It may take less time. It may not even be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but another format. They might both exist in the long run. You know, kinda like consoles, where nobody has a dominant share, and even if one did, there is no reason why other formats cannot compete (PS2 vs Xbox vs GCN comes to mind).

It's all kinda hard to say right now, but at least for me, if a player doesn't drop to 200 bucks or less, I frankly couldn't be bothered. But that's just me.

Do video rental stores carry BR/HD-DVD movies in the States? I live in Finland (the place where everyone had cellphones 5 years before the rest of the world, and there are so many people with master's degrees and doctorates that plumbers make more money, so not exactly a third world country), and I have never ever in my life seen either. The only BR cases I've even seen were in a gaming store on the PS3 shelf.

I just don't like when people bash Sony stuff only because of fact it's Sony stuff. Sure noone knows for sure but in this particular case I believe all cards are on the table right now.

It's just as bad when people bash non-Sony stuff only because it's not made by Sony.

But anyhow, I guess you are saying that in fact the war has been won by Blu-Ray then? 

Yes I have a standalone hddvd player with 36 movies. I bought it the first day it came out just like I did with the original dvd players. I didn't mean sets I meant that the movie is in hd and the extras are in sd. Every movie on hddvd that is 2 disc is also 2 disc on bluray"World Trade Center, Mission Impossible movies, Superman Returns, Dreamgirls etc.". We'll see how long it stays at 52.9% if hddvd keeps the attach ratio as high as it is some of those companies will start supporting both formats just like WB, Paramount, New Line, Dreamworks does. Most dvds have less than 5 hours of added features which no matter what you think hddvd can do just fine with a 2 hour movie and hd sound and multilanguage tracks . To the average consumer this is just fine not to mention the players are pretty much half the price of bluray players. Is 5 more hours of added features really worth a player that's twice as much as the competitions. I'm sorry I would rather flip a disc over or have a 2 disc set with hddvd and use the extra money I saved on the player and use that to buy more movies.

It's douptful if the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray step you listed will ever happen. In 2008 NEC brings their new lightreactive protein coated discs to the market. The first ones will offer about 4 Terabyte of space and are aimed for professional data storage companys but the technology allows up to 50TB on a regular CD-sized disk and will be ready for consumers by 2009-2010.

I don't think that HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (even with their 200GB version) will gain enough momentum to reach a state of distribution like the DVD. They may be used as movie media but have no future as a data storage medium.

With so much new technology coming out, this is why I don't see this war being over yet - far from it.

But even then, it's too hard for me to call - while NEC has this new technology, it's not worth much if there isn't any support from movie studios.

In terms of movie format, I'm still divided and undecided as to who will win. 

However, on the storage side of things, This could be the solution I've (we've?) been waiting for. Honestly, even Blu-ray/HD-DVD just don't cut the cake for backups, especially when the computer I use for work has a total of 970GB of "stuff" that needs to be backed up. With Blu-ray or HD-DVD the process would be painstakingly laborious to say the least, never mind even thinking about using DVDs to backup the gigaton of crap I have.

Sony makes terrible shit, they have poor R&D and at best produce products par with the rest of the market. People have learned to hate the company which took the most anticipated console of the next gen (PS3) and turned it into the most hated. The company responsable for the largest lithium ion battery recall in history. A massive digital camera recall. The PS2's chronic history of poor construction and plastic drive parts that wore down amidst a plethora of other R&D issues that plagued the console. The dreaded PS2 Blue Disc! Beta-Max! UMD! Mini-Disc! Root Kits in CDs! Once Planned to privatize registration of the PS3 game discs to keep you from playing them on anyone else's PS3 but your own. Forced Sony fans to pay 600 bucks for a system because of a new propriotary disc format (Blu-Ray) they're pushing that doesn't even have an established market yet. Announced plans for the PS4 to have no solid game format what-so-ever and just download games. And now instead of talking about how they're going to be improving the PS3 just keep babbling about how awesome PS4-PS8 is going to be.

GEE I FUCKING WONDER WHY PEOPLE HAVE TURNED ON SONY? ITS A FUCKING MYSTERY HUH? WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO BE A HATER?

 @ Gballzack

Are you N-Hus incarnation?... Hmm, probably not he at least have some concept about tech-stuff...