Contradictory, IMO.

 Why would someone looking to collect movies why would they choose only 3 major studios as opposed to 6 or 7?  Im sorry but the only people still clinging to HD DVD are those who bought into it last summer before th ePS3 came out and BD steamrolled (relatively speaking) the marketshare and have too much pride to let it go, and the people who A) dont realize that HD DVD wont let them watch many of this summers and past summers best family/feature films. and B) Havent researched on their own and hopped at the price seeing "DVD" and "HD" and thinking its as standard as regular DVD.

Im not gonna get into a huge price debate because its obvious price does matter......but i also think quality and content matter as well...."videophiles" are not going to buy the lowest Tosh HD DVD player because if they were videophiles they wouldnt want an HD DVD player that doesnt output in 1080P so they would have to buy the $500 Tosh model which is exactly what the new BD player costs and they would then have to ask if its worth giving up Sony, BVHE, Disney, Fox, Lionsgate etc. for Universal.

The point is this new BD players has the SAME specs as Tosh's $500 player.  If BDA were to release a gimped BD player that doesnt output in 1080p they could compete with Tosh's $300 model.....but these arent similar models so that negates the videophile group. 

Then IMO, we will just have to wait until fall until families go to BB or CC and see the overwhleming disparity in titles and the difference of about $150 bucks in players and decide form there.

BTW, it appears BD + is nearing completeing as Fox has just announced new Titles for Japan this July, so once Fox and Disney come around this fall, not to meantion BD-J which is what Warner is waiting for......it could finally put an end to this thing.

That's why you wait a little and buy a dual format player for the same price as either of these two. 

 The general feeling I've seen is that HD-DVD still has one more real shot at this: if they can get their players marked down below 200 dollars considerably before Blu-ray can, then they could still win this. The goal here isn't to win the technophiles, who constitue a microscopic portion (less than 2 percent? less than 1?) of the overall market. The goal is to win over families, and families don't buy 500 dollar video players. That's why Blu-ray, despite its chest thumping about "beating" HD-DVD, still constitutes only .4 percent of the overall home movie market. 

 Agreed here, Imo not saying its over at all, trust me i know there are a lot of misinformed people out there who see a shiny price tag and the words "HD combined with DVD" and think its a universally supported medium liek DVD.....lots of people liek that.

But the part i bolded is what i disagree with.  the BDA, may have silly claims from moronic PR guys comparing their product to DVD but everyone knows the real battle is to phase out HDVD before BDA can move on to even THINKING about competeing with DVD......its not about going after DVD, its about getting it to one medium and then moving forward.

BD beating HDVD is all that matters right now, gotta go in stages.

When you look at variables, yes anything is possible, Disney or Fox could announce tomorrow that they will support HDDVD as well, universal and Warner could comeout and say that BD is the way to go..but REALISTICALLY given what we know know and how adament both sides have been about seeing this thing through we have an elastic COST which will eventually come down to be about even, yet the studio support cannot be molded for HDDVD to compete......

HD DVD has advantages, they have the price and that is an enormous advantage right now, price for the same  visual product.....BUT its not a concrete advantage as price will come come down on both sides, however, BD has MANY concrete advantages  Disc space, bitrate transfer and Disney, Fox, Sony, BVHE, Lionsgate....without talking out of our bums and without wishful thinking this will not change base don EVERYTHING we know right now, sales of software for th elats 6 months have showsn BD selling more than TWICE the amount of discs....at this point there is NO sign of any company jumping ship form both sides so i dont want to here that wishful thinking as an argument.

Hmm, the question is how do you define "considerably before". Week? Month? More? I don't believe Sony would just sit and look at such movement for lets say 6 months. They would drop price as well. I don't think HD-DVD can win only because of minor difference in price. Blu-ray has two major advantage - it's bigger (1 disc movies) and has stronger support in Hollywood. 

Is it much cheaper to manufacture HD-DVD players? Anyone knows anything in this matter? 

Right now, there are HD-DVD players for 300ish, so it's got a good head start.

Now,  I totally agree with you -- it's tough to say how long a considerable time is. I'd say the HD-DVD player would need a good 6 months at least if it were to really put a beat down on Blu-ray. I'd say a year or more is probably necessary. But these are all guesses from me, and I'm not especially experienced in such matters.

Let's just say that the HD-DVD player will probably get more than two months of time when it's price is sub-199 and the Blu-ray isn't; on the other side, it will probably get less than two years. Other than that, I'm just going to leave it at: "It's possible the lower pricing could have an effect once we start reaching mass market prices"

 The reaosn why the $300 dollar is that way is because its gimped....it has awful HDMI output accoridng to reports and doesnt display 1080p...THAT is hwy its cheaper. 

The equivelant Toshiba HD DVD player to ANY BD player is $500 MSRP.....the same as sony's new player, there is no price difference anymore as far as equal standalones go, this is actually more of an important day than people realize in regards to this format war....it shows sony is not only away f the pricing advantage but they are not going to let it go on....i dont think they will compromise the wuality of BD and release a cheap player that wont output 1080p to comete with the Tosh $300 player, but as far as quality goes in comparing players, the price is even now.  

There probably will never be an end to the formant war, companies will just make hybrid players, I mean think how many types of DVDs nor am DVD players play: DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM etc

Correct me if I'm wrong on this one but the Sony player just released is likely to reflect its exact MSRP of $500 while the Toshiba HD-A20 which I believe your talking about can be had for just under $400 now and probably is at the point where it could and would cut prices even further going into the holiday season for those that need a step up in their player although if you technically want to count it I believe the Xbox360 player is capable of 1080p with a firmware update. Anyways in my opinion this war will most likely become irrelavant in the end it isn't like the Betamax versus VHS war your going to have comparable priced dual format players by the end of next year and if these really catch on I would expect the companies producing on either disk to go with whichever is cheaper for them to produce on.

I don't like the format wars, but the thought of hybrid players is even less appealing.

The problem being a library of BR-DVD/HD-DVD's means that one would have to perpetually buy hybrid players, or eventually forgo part of your new collection...