Talon has a point. DVDs were immensely better than VHS. They didn't degrade over time, you could "rewind" them is a split second, they were small, and people had already switched from tapes to CDs for music so VHS tapes to DVDs just made sense.

I think companies are losing $$ on both formats anyway -- no one cares.

 No, HD-DVD is losing money, and blu-ray is profitable. I base this not on facts, but on what most of the posters on these HD wars threads want to be true.

 Well, Sony has just barely turned a profit for the most recent quarter in its Pictures division, the BD-related one, wheras earlier it posted a loss most likely because profits are usually nonexistent when introducing a new product.  And no this doesn't prove anything at all, but it does lead me to beleive that BD isn't doing too bad w/r/t profit.

And then came the chinese who made $100 DVD players. And buddha saw it, and it was good. He sayeth, "let the masses watch DVD" and it was made so.

One thing that HD-DVD and BD bring to the table is that people can actually get their season TV shows all on one disk instead of 3-5 or more. That's one advantage that has nothing to do with picture clarity. I do agree though, it's not as drastic as a change as VHS to DVD was, but it's an improvement. Just as cassette tapes were an improvement over 8-tracks. It took time, but cassettes took over.

When the costs of the players get in the $100 range or less and the movies drop to current DVD prices ($10-$18) as the media costs drop, look forward to more people taking advantage of this and moving to the next step. Digital download isn't far off, but without a solid increase in bandwidth to the average household and a more reliable method of storage, it won't take over. Hard Drives can lose their data and then you lose your movies unless you purchase them again. You will only lose your HD DVD or BD by physically losing or destroying the disk which is not an easy task unless you try or are just plain and simple careless.

Either way, you won't see fast adoption rate of the HD formats until 2009 at the earliest if not 2010.

Thats assuming they keep standard definition on shows, which is doubtful. The reason for the big box sets has a lot to do with perceived value. Even today, a big box of DVDs with the same amount of content as one HD-DVD does not carry the same perceived value.

My ISP already offers HDTV services streamed via broadband where I live. The bandwidth definitely is available. The service costs about 8$/month additional for the HD option. Granted, it's only 720p at the moment, but HD it is!  This is the initial service offering. I'm sure by the time the competition catches up, we'll get price cuts/higher resolutions/wider variety of channels. You know, the typical cutthroat B2C market...

In terms of reliable storage, how unreliable are hard drives? I've found them to be quite reliable. In contrast, I've had discs peel or mold due to humidity while sitting nicely inside the jewel box. Personally, I think people are far more likely to lose or otherwise deface discs simply because it requires manual handling - with a hard drive, you don't move it at all. Hard drive reliability will only increase with the introduction of solid state drives.

Good point.

I bet if Konami released two versions of their MGS collector's set, the one that has the bunch of discs would sell much more than the one with a single disc. 

Universal going neutral doesn't change that much, the reasons for going with hd-dvd would still be there.

- Better selection of titles on HD-DVD today.

- No reasonably priced BR standalone players with full feature set.

- No expensive BR standalone players with full feature set.

- More mature platform. (BR is still changeing specs)

 - No regional codeing on HD-DVD

- Extra nasty copy protection to be implemented on BR.

- HD-DVD has the support of more studios than BR.

-Some BR exclusives are released on HD-DVD before BR