No player prices won't be equal in a year.....in fact you'll be able to find those A2's for $30 right above the antiquated Laserdisc player.  Rock bottom prices for a non-existent format.  WOO!

blu-ray might win but i dont think hd-dvd will die anytime soon

Remember the Wal-Mart secret sale a couple of weeks ago with $99 HD DVD players?

Well, for the secret sale next week (the weekend following Black Friday) they're giving away 10 free Blu-Ray movies instantly with every 80gb ps3 purchased, not including the 5 free by mail. That's 15 movies for free!

See more here and here:

Well that deal might be interesting. A few more like that, and hi-def just may break out of the 5% share.

If the Smasung rumor is true, then there goes HD DVD's price advantage. You can get the Samsung Blu-Ray player with 8 free movies for $299, or the Toshiba A2 for $228 with 5 free movies. Very similar prices overall, except the Samsung is 1080p.

Again, price is not the only factor that could favor HD-DVD. It's just the most obvious.

Plus the 1080p is not really an advantage for the blu-ray player. Even though only videophiles care about 1080p, they also know that a 1080p HDTV will encode a 1080i signal into progressive scan anyway, as long as the source is (as in the movie disc). This was made very clear in some early reviews of early BD and HD players.

So even though HD-DVD doesn't have a major price advantage, blu-ray doesn't have a major tech advantage either. So it boils down to content. And in this case, we can't really call, since there are hits, and likely hits across both formats.

I will likely get both formats, but when the prices go down, and when there are enough movies I want in HD.

I know 1080i/p doesn't really make a difference, but it looks good on paper. Hell even Toshiba sells it's own 1080p players for a couple hundred more than the A2/3, so there must be some fools that buy into the hype.

As for content, that is the one area where Blu-Ray has the obvious advantage. The big releases it gets every month are one of the main reasons it dominates in software sales so heavily.

Two weeks ago it was SM3, last week Cars and Ratatouille, this week Close Encounters of the Third Kind, next week Die Hard 1-4, two weeks later PotC3, Independence Day, and Superbad, all exclusive, with other big hitters like Harry Potter and Blade Runner thrown into the mix as well.

The only big hitters Toshiba has this quarter are Shrek 3, the Bourne Ultimatem, and Anchorman, aside from the multiformat titles like Harry Potter and Blade Runner.

Just check out the upcoming releases for either format:

Blu-Ray

HD DVD

Are you trying to argue that blu-ray will likely stay in the lead, or that this will kill HD-DVD? I just want to know, since it's the latter I'm arguing, not the former.

The former.

This is the gist of my theory: If Warner goes Blu exclusive in '08, Blu-Ray wins. If Warner goes HD in '08, things end in a stalemate (at least in the US). If Warner stays neutral, things proceed as they are, with Blu-Ray maintaining a nice advantage over HD DVD, but with both sticking around for quite some time.  Of course, Blu-Ray could possibly pull a victory over the years if Warner stays neutral.

However, Warner will go exclusive one way or the other eventually (they've admitted so theymselves), and I believe that the last bit of my theory (Blu-Ray maintaining it's lead) will lead to the first bit of my theory (Warner going Blu and the war ending).

I actually agree with that, in the most part. Who knows what else could happen by then.