I plan to paint my living room and watch it dry instead.

The super what?

In the higher price range I would clearly suggest to get the Toshiba HD-XA2.
A great player for HD-DVD and an amazing scaler for you existing DVD collection.

I don't care about the religious fight about 720p / 1080p.
But I do care whether I will end up with some electronics that do not fulfill my needs from the start.

I waited for the specs of the iTV, since I have great respect of the innovations coming from Apple. And they delivered, just not for the upper end of the scale... yet.

Unfortunately, I am in the market for a streaming solution right now, and it has to be 1080p with the major codecs supported. Therefore, it will not be the ?TV, even if that would have made #10 of my Apple products.
Guess the iPhone will have the celebratory honors of being #10.

Matt,
I don't usually frequent places where this is usually uttered, but here goes:
Amen!

Does anyone know the reason, why MPEG2 is used on blu-ray?
Quality and space wise it would put blu-ray ahead of HD-DVD if they used MPEG4-AVC. So what is the problem?
Decoder chips not available (Toshiba obviously got enough of them), heat dissipation... what gives?

I couldn't care less for any so called 'special content'.

Essentially, it is most of the time stuff where they are trying to convince you that
a) the movie is great
b) the story is great
c) the actors are great
d) the director is great

You know what? I bought the damn thing, so I must already be convinced of either a, b, c or d. So pretty please, with sugar on top... cut the crap out of the discs.
I want to be able to plop in the disc, and when I press play, I want the movie (aka main feature) to start playing.

Wow, I should consult people the way that article was written.

For 12k a pop I will let people toss a coin on any subject.
And as a bonus, they will be allowed to keep the coin!

Got the latest Dilbert, anyone?

So far the best pro and cons on the matter I have come across, guys.

Essentially, I have to agree with john speed. In about 5 years, the medium will not matter anymore, only the content. And trust me, the studios will be (actually are) jumping onto that asap, since that would allow them to have full control over their products. The same as in the music industry will happen with the movie industry. The only reason why it is not here yet, is available internet speed to the masses. Once it's readily available, the content will come too.

And on the PS3 issue: People will buy their games and not even know whether it is on a blu ray or else, they will know it's the latest PS3 game and that's it. Who uses their PS2 (or XBox) for anything else than games? Only geeks and freaks.

I think the war will be won when the peasants join the battle...

I mean those people that are not reading every shred of article that has the word HD in it and therefore have no clue on what is what and buy whatever seems better at first sight.

And at first sight, HD DVD seams to be what they want... high def.
Meanwhile, Blu Ray seems just to be... what, the new weird guy in the neighbourhood?

And yes, it does seem to be VHS vs. Beta-Max again...
Video Home System vs. unfinished Max... Maximilianus Boutoulakis, from Greece... some new vitamin someone came up with?

Oh, yes.. and HD DVD just sounds sexy and masculine.

I still think blu ray will be around for another 5 years or so... until PS4, that is.