Ok!  It sounds like you're a bit of a movie fan and like some of the BD movies as well but the price of the player is scaring you away.  I was actually hoping that you or twesterm or one of the other big HDDVD people would check out this thread.

And price is really the point of my thread but i'm not going to get to the punch line yet.  But what if BD players were only $100 and HD-DVD players say $50?  Would the lower price points get you to switch? 

Well, I bought an HD DVD player for $100. And when Blu-ray gets that low in price, I'll buy that also.

It wouldn't get me to switch, it would just allow me to have both. I think this would be the case for most people at the prices your giving.

Right. Why would anyone "switch"? They would just get both. If price is excluded from the equation, the deciding factor between the formats is the movie selection. Any movie fan will get both formats to have all releases available to them.

 What potential benefits are you speaking of?

Ok, that's actually a fair question goosegaws. Well what if I modifying my question to ask you which you would use more if the prices presented were realistic?

@ProfDallas:

Which I would use more? I'm not sure I understand. Again, it relates specifically to the movies available for each format.

Based on what you know about the pricing of the movies, the availability of titles, the features of the players that you like or don't like and all other relavant factors, which format would you feel that you would end up using more if the prices for the players were much lower, as in $100 for a BD player and $50 for a HD-DVD player?

@FOOD88:

Well, this has been discussed in painful detail in other threads already, but the basics of it come down to the costs involved in manufacturing as well as failure rates of production yields. Also, the HD-DVD spec has been final since it came to market, whereas the Blu-ray spec has changed and will likely change again. HD-DVD specs require each player to support specific codecs which are not required to be supported by Blu-ray players, and each HD-DVD player is required to have an ethernet port for internet access while Blu-ray players are not.

@ProfDallas:

The question can't really be answered objectively. It can't be known which studios are going to release which titles, and which of those titles I will be willing to purchase. There are exclusive titles currently available for both formats that I like enough to own. I can't get Ratatouille on HD-DVD, so I have to buy it for Blu-ray. If all things were equal and every release was dual-format, I would be more likely to purchase an HD-DVD version because I believe the format has more potential for benefits to the consumer and the manufacturer, and I would support it based on that belief. All the potential in the world is moot in the face of studio support, however.

Good point, but either way, Joe Blow is going to go for the format that has Spiderman 3 and some Disney stuff for his kids. I can't see HD-DVD coming back with studio support that is more limited than blu-rays. The exclusivity deal with Paramount and Dreamworks is only prolonging a war that blu-ray is clearly still winning, so if anything HD-DVD is just annoying. I see blu-ray appealing more to the common folk just of the basis of their studio support and even more so with its implementation with some Dell computers. 

About the ethernet port, if it is really needed, Sony or whoever manufactured the blu-ray player sends a disc with a firmware update.