ProfDallas said: madskillz said: The main problem I have with Blu Ray is the price. It's like the PS3 - I don't have a prob with it at all - except for the high price tag. For me, it's all about value. And there are tons of movies on BR I would love to have, but the price of admission isn't where I want it to be. If they were the same, I would buy both ... 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?

I don't really care for HD-DVD one way or the other (same feelings for BluRay though I still haven't gotten my BR movie yet-- though assume it's going to be the same).  I do admit that with HD-DVD at least the difference was a lot more than I expected (and expect the same for BR) so at least watching the HD format is worth it.  When one format wins I'll actually start buying movies until then, I'm going to continue to be a Netflix fiend.

@Davygee: Good thing you mentioned the ethernet, the MHP standard also requires ethernet connection, but as you propably know, MHP was pretty much DOA (although it's a great idea).
Anyway, my information may be old, but just a while ago, most European studios were planning on going to HD-DVD, and that mixes things even more.
And the BD depency on PS3 may cause BD be labelled as "PS3 exclusive format" in publics eyes. Just look at how things are seen in general at the moment even in the eyes of people who know how things are: BD is seen as the "PS3 media" like UMD and HD-DVD as "universal media" like DVD.

Put it this way. Say if all movies were released in two formats (no studio exclusivity), I see no reason to buy blu-ray. Twice the cost, I'd rather buy 2 movies on HD DVD than 1 movie on bluray. Plus, I prefer the HDi and PiP, and web-enabled features more than the miniscual slightly "better spec on paper" (note, spec on paper, doesn't mean it's necessary better when actually looking or hearing). But that's just my trade off.

stof said: Here's a question for you Dallas. Do you think that perhaps there are people out there that actually think HD-DVD is the better option? and not just the cheaper but inferior one?

Sure.  Do but you mean better as in technologically superior or better as that HD-DVD is a more practical solution?

ProfDallas said: What if the next-gen disc players were at ridiculously low prices, say $1 for the HDDVD players and $2 for the BD players. Would these low prices convert you to the BD side?

Hmm, i'd possibly just buy one of each.  HD-DVD has an advantage over BD in my opinion because of the movies released and future releases for it (Paramount exclusivity is huge for me).  So while I'd still prefer HD-DVD to BD, I'd probably just buy both.

$1:$2 and $200:$400 both have the same ratio but fall on a different supply and demand graph, and your point of the topic is???? like a few others already stated price will have an inititial effect on consumers, but when it drop to a certain low point it'll no longer be a deciding factor for consumers. This will turn to a competition of which format provide the best contents.

Technological superiority is a hard concept to quantify, let alone demonstrate. More storage space is not exactly what I would call “superior technology”. And I would defy anyone to demonstrate that 1080 progressive is better than 1080 interlaced on my 32 inch TV.

Personally, I'm tired of Sony and their failed formats. Their history as an electronics company is littered with failed attempts to create proprietary formats that the world does not need, and from which they can squeeze more money from the consumer.

If Sony paid me to take their over-engineered BD technology I would not.

Pk9394 said: $1:$2 and $200:$400 both have the same ratio but fall on a different supply and demand graph, and your point of the topic is???? like a few others already stated price will have an inititial effect on consumers, but when it drop to a certain low point it'll no longer be a deciding factor for consumers. This will turn to a competition of which format provide the best contents.

The formats appear to be a horse a piece right now, except in exclusive content. And if it wasn't for paramount being HD-DVD exclusive, I'd say they were about the same there as well, or perhaps BD would have a slight advantage.

It's hard to quantify which format is technically superior.  I'd say HD-DVD, if only for the slight storage advantage (51GB vs 50GB).  But that quantity doesn't really matter.  What is valuable, however, is the solidity of the specifications.  And HD-DVD's specs have been solid for well over a year, whereas BD specs have changed and been incomplete.

I believe that all HD-DVD players currently on the market are capable of reading 51GB triple layer discs, although some may require a firmware update.  The updates for all players could be included on the triple layer DVD, of course, and would only require a couple hundred megs of the first layer, making that issue moot.

I want one of the dual players so I don't have to have two separate systems to play all the movies... The current state of HD formats is BS I don't care what side of the fence you are on.

NeoRatt said: I want one of the dual players so I don't have to have two separate systems to play all the movies... The current state of HD formats is BS I don't care what side of the fence you are on.

There aren't many movies available for either format yet (a couple hundred each) and they're way, way overpriced.  Honestly, I'd probably grab a DVD over an HD-DVD if I was in store and wanted a particular movie because I get all of my DVDs under $10 and the only HD-DVDs sold for cheap or as part of a 2-for-1 deal are usually bad movies.  Like 300 or Transformers.

I guess I get a lot of HD content (~70 channels and at least 100 hours of content on my HD-DVR right now), so getting HD discs isn't all that important to me. 

The sound on some disc-based HD movies is phenominal, though.  Even sampled down to 1.5mbit DTS.