The format war is irrelevant. Both will die or have very little sales in 3 years time. Download will have majority sales. Music industry?

The format war has done some good things, but it could also do some very bad things, like scare away the consumer. I think everyone is glad that player prices have dropped as quickly as they have, but I don't even know if Toshiba thinks they can win this thing anymore. Comparing the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD release lineup for this fall/holiday is almost depressing for the HD-DVD crowd. That doesn't mean there aren't some good titles, but there just aren't that many titles period.

Blu-Ray has about 110 listings on highdefdigest.com (and that is not counting individual movies in sets and non-movies like the HDScape stuff) while HD-DVD has about 65 (not counting Warner's non-combo disc reissues, not counting non-movies, and not counting individual movies in sets).

Blu-Ray also has most of the highest grossing titles over the summer like Pirates, Spiderman, Ratatouille, Fantastic Four, among others. HD-DVD has Transformers, the Bourne Ultimatum, Knocked Up, and not much else that Blu-Ray doesn't have. I just don't see HD-DVD winning if they don't have more movies.

 65 compared to 110, as in over 50%, aren't just that many? Now you're just outright lying. And you're comment about "among others" versus "not much else" is just your word over what you want us to think will sell, not what actually will.

 And I'm not even going to get into the critical opinions (from audiences as well as critics) of the films you listed for each side.

Umm...HDDVD is doing fine. I saw the latest Nielson weekly charts and Bluray/HDDDVD software sales was 56-44 Blu. That's one of the worst weeks for Blu as just a few weeks ago Blu was often racking up 70%+ share. Pretty soon HDDVD may win a week if this keeps up, for the first time in ages. Even Sony's own PR is showing Blu Ray sales are declining, 

Now this seems odd to me, PS3 sales are higher after the price cut, and the introduction of the 499 stand alone Sony Blu ray player should have stimulated sales also, so how can blu ray actually be losing ground in the Nielson sales in recent weeks? I think perhaps it is much like the PSP, while UMD's sold well at first, gamers quickly lost interest in them? If all those PS3 owners are buying less Blu ray's that might explain things.

But the Paramount defection was really, really huge for HDDVD. It bought them more time, and the way HDDVD wins this war is by dragging it out longer and longer. Bill Hunt at the digital bits, a huge blu ray fanboy, already predicted HDDVD would be dead by September a few months ago. Well, it is now September and HDDVD is still here, if not stronger than ever.

Also, Paramount makes Transformers HDDVD exclusive, and if you ask me that is THE single biggest title people will be wanting in hi-def this fall. It created the most buzz and also was the most highly rated of the blockbusters. Spiderman 3 and Pirates:AWE both weren't very good and are also old hat, where Transformers is a new franchise which makes it more exciting. The former wont be lusted after as highly as Transformers imo.

Also Disney on Blu isn't as big a deal as you'd think imo...I work in distribution and the only VHS we stocked until recently (dont think we have any anymore) was...kids movies. Why? Well it's obvious, people would have an old VCR in the kids room and whatever. In other words Disney makes kid flicks and picture quality isn't cared about on them..people will buy them on DVD.

Anyways yes, apparently blu ray stand alones outsold HDDVD SA's recently..but I cant expect that to continue, with so many cheap HDDVD players floating around as holidays approach. Plus the Xbox360 HDDVD player is probably selling really well also and should do big sales near Christmas as well, as all those existing 360 owners, which are many more than PS3 owners, can receive them as a present.

Sony owners have been trying to say "the war is over, the war is over" for how long now? Face it guys, you can tell yourself that all you want, it's just not happening. Things are worse for Blu ray now than they were six months ago, with the Paramount announcment. At some point HDDVD will have so many players sold that it's not gonna go away..because all those owners are not just going to accept being rendered obsolete..when that point is I dunno, but it gets closer everyday.

Also, there are strong rumors of a 51 GB HDDVD triple layer disc that plays on all previous HDDVD hardware as well...if that is true I think it will be very big..supposedly Disney's excuse for Blu is capacity..well if there is a 51 GB HDDVD, what are they gonna say then?

Plus HDDVD can make dual HDDVD/DVD's, and I dont think Blu can. If Paramount went to every disc being dual, as I believe it was rumored, that would be enormous..everybody buying a DVD would also be getting the HDDVD, so if and when they go to buy a hi-def player of course it would be HDDVD since they would already own many HDDVD's..it's just one more way HDDVD is winning by being overwhelming.

Toshiba anounced several days ago that they will have 125 titles released in the U.S. in Q4 and you forgot the second biggest movie of the year in the U.S. Shrek the Third will only be on HDDVD.

2 Weeks ago it was 71/29.

HDDVD had a very strong week and BR a very weak one, powered purely by the release of Heroes, Dawn of the dead, Notting Hill and Blades of Glory and no new BR releases.

Frankly that's a very poor show with those big hitters coming out, and if it couldn't break 50% this week, I doubt it will this year.

51GB has been accepted by the DVD Forum, but most insider speculation is that current players will not be able to read this new format, rendering all current players obsolete.

I've been hearing Blu ray guys say "well HDDVD has a great lineup, they'll probably win this week" going back months..so I dont put a lot of stock in that. HDDVD has not won a week in many months. So the fact they got within 6 points must not be a "weak showing". Several weeks ago on another forum the blu guys said HDDVD would win a week, that week it was like 65-35 blu. So in the past weeks that were supposed to be good for HDDVD did not do as good as last week, implying HDDVD is increasing.

As for 51 GB on current players, I think it's up in the air. But there is plenty of insider speculation that it will be playable on current players (which actually makes sense..sice I understand nothing changed in the the third layer). Whereas it's known current Blu ray players can never increase their 50 GB's.

Blades was the only big hitter Heroes is a tv show and the rest are catalog titles. You mean it was a poor showing for Blu-ray with the 2m+ players out their they should be outselling HD 85/15. What insider speculation are you refering to the blueray.com insiders. Do you really think the DVD forum would accept the 51gb disc if it wasn't going to be compatible with all the HD and 360 players out their.

Sales ratios vary from week to week, what we do know is the average is only around 2:1 in Blu Ray favour even though Blu Ray has a 10-1 player sales lead (incl. PS3).

Re the 51GB discs, I’ve seen specs for the very first players that show triple layer compatibility. The 51GB discs are slightly different to 45GB and at the same time they are trying to increase the data rate to 1.5X. Even so, compatibility with at least the 2^nd gen players seems certain.

I have 2 2^nd gen players and have zero worries about 51GB working or not. The same can’t be said about current 1.0 Blu Ray players which are scheduled to become obsolete on the 31^st of October this year when the new 1.1 players arrive.

If you see the trend of HDDVD vs BR its been pretty much stagnent through this least year, with the 2/3rds split. Heroes is a very big seller, TV Box sets are the new blockbusters.