Even longer, I believe. I don't think any BD players with profile 1.1 have been announced yet (maybe the $2,000 one had 1.1, I can't recall). The spec is supposed to be finalized by November, but the hardware will take a few more months after that to come out.
So my recommendation would be to either buy HD DVD and enjoy HD now, buy BD and not be able to enjoy any extra features on new disks, or buy neither and wait it out until sometime next year.
If it were me (and it was at one point), I'd buy a Toshiba HD-A2 for around $230 and enjoy HD now. Yeah, you won't get to see Disney/Fox/Sony movies yet, but frankly two of those three studios haven't released much anyway. Some Sony movies would be nice, but you'll have that problem regardless of which format you buy at this point (unless you buy both). There's tons of good movies from Universal, Warner Brothers, Weinstein, and Paramount, all of which are on HD DVD (plus, you can always buy some of the BD exclusives from Europe on HD DVD - cheaper than buying a BD player if you only want a few, although not all movies are available obviously).
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"best to wait til November?"
Even longer, I believe. I don't think any BD players with profile 1.1 have been announced yet (maybe the $2,000 one had 1.1, I can't recall). The spec is supposed to be finalized by November, but the hardware will take a few more months after that to come out.
So my recommendation would be to either buy HD DVD and enjoy HD now, buy BD and not be able to enjoy any extra features on new disks, or buy neither and wait it out until sometime next year.
If it were me (and it was at one point), I'd buy a Toshiba HD-A2 for around $230 and enjoy HD now. Yeah, you won't get to see Disney/Fox/Sony movies yet, but frankly two of those three studios haven't released much anyway. Some Sony movies would be nice, but you'll have that problem regardless of which format you buy at this point (unless you buy both). There's tons of good movies from Universal, Warner Brothers, Weinstein, and Paramount, all of which are on HD DVD (plus, you can always buy some of the BD exclusives from Europe on HD DVD - cheaper than buying a BD player if you only want a few, although not all movies are available obviously).
or buy a BD now that will be firmware upgraded to 1.1 later once the spec is completely finalized.