The amount of electronics thrown away rather than recycled in 2007.
The EPA reports that 82% of electronics disposal in 2007 ended up in the garbage (mostly landfills) rather than a recycling center. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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Scoot,
That's why I've already suggested on HDBeat that once a price war truly begins with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the HD-DVD platform will drop the H.264 MPEG4 AVC codec. Microsoft is supporting the platform behind the scenes and its not in their best interest to allow H.264 to be supported when they'd lose licensing revenue from the studios switching from VC-1 to H.264.
Not only does Microsoft want to make licensing revenue off VC-1 per HD-DVD player and title sold, they also want HD-DVD to succeed so they make money of the iHD software as well. To a monopolist such as Microsoft, they don't want H.264 to succeed because it will directly benefit Sony and Apple and thus offer a reason for the rest of the consumer electronics manufacturers not to license Microsoft's technology.
While supported in name by the Blu-Ray Disc Association, it will be a cold day in Hades before VC-1 gets more than begrudging support (and especially from Sony). Warner Home Video will likely transition to VC-1 because it is not beyond the pale to assume that they were given a price break on the technology as part of the comprehensive antitrust settlement between Microsoft and TimeWarner just a few short years ago ($790 million plus various licenses in exchange for TimeWarner forcing its AOL division to settle instead of holding out for a judgment in favor of AOL's $10 billion claim against Microsoft).
The real hard spot currently is being a Blu-Ray supporter (with sticking it to Microsoft as an added bonus) because Sony won't ship any titles outside of the obsolete MPEG2 codec because they don't want to help Microsoft establish VC-1, and the existing Blu-Ray players (and HD-DVD for that matter too) have too weak of a decoder chip present in them to do decent H.264 decoding. Neither platform should be on the market now, but we can thank Toshiba/Warner/Microsoft for rushing and pushing this format war on Joe Consumer.