Which still will be pretty unimpressive because it means that over 70% of people will be choosing to replace their broken DVD players with a new DVD player rather than move towards the new HD formats ... Basically this means that the HD formats are following my prediction of being irrelevant until 2010 or later

careful now. hdtv's are coming down in price a very big way. while some people are perfectly content paying over $1000 for a flat panel, as they get closer and closer to the $400-$500 mark for a quality model, expect technology/services taking advantage of HD displays (HD movie playback, HD tv channels/on demand content, HD video games) to become ever more relevant. As it stands a quality 32inch 1080i tv (Sharp Aquos) can be had for about ~$800.

 I'm not going to lie though squrriel. after that "sony should remove blu ray movie playback from the $400 ps3" comment you made, i have a hard time taking you seriously. mabye you were joking though, i'm not sure.

I wasn't joking ...

Sony could easily remove the dedicated hardware for video-encoding, remove the licencing fee from the hardware, and thus save (over) $50 on every console and still offer a Blu-Ray movie player for download from the Playstation store for a nominal fee for the people who want Blu-Ray movies.

In my opinion removing backwards compatibility should have occured after they removed Blu-Ray movie playback and Wifi because it can not be easily returned through a download or through and optional accessory ...

The dedicated hardware for video encoding? You mean the Cell and RSX? What the heck are you talking about? It would be video decoding for playback anyway. I think you've been reading too many 360 fanboy posts.

They're called Hardware Decoders and I haven't been able to find a source which states whether the PS3 uses them or not (I've seen several fanboy sites argue both sides, some claiming the 'Power of the Cell' is so great it outperforms hardware decoders and others claiming that Sony included hardware decoders because they wanted to deliver the best viewing experience)

Regardless, if it is already a software decoder why not stop forcing everyone to buy the Blu-Ray licence and allow them to download the decoder at some nominal fee? Why is Sony stripping in-demand features which can not be easily replaced when they can remove features which are easy to return for those people who actually want them?