Another point, if the DVD forum is not a standard body, why are there no Blu Ray DVD combo disks?

That is the problem; Sony does not properly plan this stuff. It happened with beta, DAT, SACD, etc., etc. They always put their eggs in one basket, figuring people will buy, yet it has never worked for them. This time, they figured movies titles would sell, so rather then making a user friendly language(come on, is java friendly to those who haven't programmed before?), having their specs defined, and making sure everything is backwards compatible, and getting the DVD Forum on their side, they pushed forward figuring the would quickly win and everyone would be content and size.

I don't know the numbers, but Paramount(Dream Works is part of Par.) and Universal, their content is probably equal to, if not greater then the big guns with BR(Sony, Disney, Fox), etc. I keep hearing, LOTR will decide the war, BR has fox, which will win it on Star Wars, etc. No movie, unless it appeals to all genres equally will win it. Look at Pirates. That was about the most appealing movie to all ages and genres I can think of, and it really didn't sell much better then the matrix trilogy which really only appeals to science fiction crowd. Is it because HD-DVD was better? No, it's because people don't care and are skeptical when they see 2 competing formats side by side. Lack of knowledge coupled with all of the FUD we hear keeps the cash in the wallets.

Price is a big point, but in the long run, it doesn't matter. They will figure out how to get sub $100 winning players as soon as they can to make the most money. Yes, it will help decide, but realistically, it took years to get a sub $200 DVD player, and we aren't too far from that now with HD-DVD, thanks to the competition and need to get an adopted format on all sides. A lot of people will be burned by the war, but for the non-early adopter, this war has made things more affordable.

Had Sony defined everything, I'd have been in their corner, despite price. Where there's a will, there's a cheap way, however will needs to be clearly defined and backwards compatible(I know, the supposed 3 layer HD-DVD won't be, despite the fact that layers are read with a different temperature lasor, and if the layer needs a temp between the 2 existing ones, it's a firmware update, if they aren't already set up to play).

Speaking of firmware updates, HD-DVD is much better and easier to update thanks to the built in ethernet, right? AV users and computer geeks are cut from different cloth. Just cause we know to hook it up, or in BR's case, burn a CD with the update, it doesn't mean a mouth breather who couldn't figure out how to program a VCR will. RTFM. What is that?

I feel sorry for the return line cashiers at electronic stores.....

If you do a study of the right candidates, you can show smoking does not cause cancer.

I did a study to show 99% of these surveys are bias.

I just got a copy of Game Informer(or whatever mag they give you when you sign up for the club at game stop) and it said that the 360 has sold more games then both the Wii and PS3 combined. The article made it "sound" like it was number of titles, but never said specifically, numbers, revenue, geographics, etc. If I looked hard enough, I could probably find stats showing the Atari 2600 was the highest selling console in some 3rd world country, but if I never say where, it really distorts the article.

I mean, numbers over the Wii sounds quite possible since Wii is targetting a lot more weekend wariors, but still, unless I know all the details of the study......

Come on. Their kick butt and taking names. I mean, 15,000 units to date is a lot. In a year, that's about 41 movies a day. They're gonna be rolling in the dough now. The BR execs might be able to use their bonus to take the fam to McDonalds.

The thing I don't understand is why don't they just add the DVD for free. It costs next to nothing to produce a DVD, and it the yield of producing HDDVD is 4x the yeild of BR, so why not package it in there for free. I really think price point of movies set by Hollywood is Toshiba's biggest downfall at this point. If they would cut the price, they'd probably mop the floor with sony.

Cheap players help, but really, how much have you spent on movies in comparison to players over the last decade?

$34.99 for a DVD? What do they think this is, LOTR extended edition? It didn't even compare to the first, and I'd flip a coin if it was better then the second, which ain't saying much.

This wow, for 1 more dollar I could get the hi-def BR with so much more so I may as well pick allegience might work if it was a good movie. I have a feeling it will work about as well trying to sell reading glasses to the blind.

I swear, this war is bringing out the biggest technological gossip queens I've ever seen. They still sell HD-DVD players on line, as well as HD-DVD xbox add on. The PS3 is still the most bought player, even by those actually intending to use it as a BR player. So what, we have another place selling an over priced player, yeah, that will make a dent.