Well, they don't manufacture them, but I still have way more red than blue...and way more DVDs than either, naturally. To be fair, I just got a cheapo BD player.

I'm half tempted to try to find an HD-DVD drive so I can rip/transcode. I might want to watch Bourne Identity again someday, but I have no intention of buying it on BD when I have a decent copy already.

"Skipping the FBI notice, the WHV logo and the MPPA rating, not to mention the DRM, would be way illegal."

I hear you. I've bugged my representatives about no-skip being ILLEGAL. Once money changes hands, it's my player. Once money changes hands, it SHOULD be my copy of a movie. If I get a movie legally, it's technically ILLEGAL to skip the FBI warnings. If, however, I STEAL the movie online, I DON'T have to watch the warning.

"I just wish the DVD Forum and BDA weren't sworn enemies because, honestly, knowing what HD DVD was capable of but never implemented, one fix at a stroke would be to incorporate HD DVD's high level technologies onto BD's low level systems."

Well, honestly, most (if not all of) the features HD DVD had are right there in Profile 2.0--PiP, network capability, and so on. There are technological differences in the way the streams are created, and BD uses Java while HD used a combination of XML and ECMAScript, but I think that'd just be splitting hairs.

"So the successor to DVD will not be Blu-ray. It'll probably be Silverlight or Flash or something like that, perhaps with DivX holding on as a system for HD storage. And, you know, I can live with that."

I made a comment later down that I think that, instead of manufacturers, say, partnering with Netflix, there should be a BD Online streaming *standard*. I'd be all too happy to drop $250-$400 for a player that's also an online media manager, in all honesty. And just to split hairs, DivX is, iirc, h.263 with MP3 audio, so yeah, that's very feasable on BD players.

Honestly, I'm in a camp where I'm on the low end of middle class, and people thought I took leave of my senses when I bought a 32" HDTV with so-so contrast--not because it's *only* 32" or the so-so contrast, but because people thought it was too expensive LOL I know plenty of people my age who, because they're trying to be more financially responsible, aren't replacing their old TVs, which, to be fair, tend to be really nice 27" SDTVs.

For those folks, Blu-Ray really IS a waste.

For me, considering that I don't sit right up in front of the TV, SD content tends to look just fine. That's the main reason why I'm still using the Toshiba HD-A3 I bought last Christmas; upscaled DVDs still look mighty fine.

Heck, there were plenty of sub-$200 players this Christmas, but I'm still holding back, and I think I finally figured out why I'm holding back.

I want a paradigm shift.

Seriously, guys. I mean, it's great that Blu-Ray offers all these great high-end features. Really, it is! However, like I said, I have this 32" TV plugged into an 18-year-old head unit that only does 4-speaker Dolby surround, with 25-year-old Onkyo speakers in the front and some fairly generic speakers in the back. DVD still rocks on this setup, since this setup is inadequate even for DVD.

But that's not all. Honestly, I guess the cracking of CSS made it so darn easy to copy the DVD content and convert it to MPEG4, plus DVD playback is so ubiquitous, that going back to expensive players that you have to feed discs, then wait for loading, then sit through all the FBI and Interpol warnings that're only seen by honest people, feels like a step back in time, a journey back to the Stone Age.

I doubt we lowly consumers could convince the BDA of allowing such simple access to the content we pay to have a ccess to, so here's my proposal for the next Profile: BD Streaming. The Profile 2.0 players already have networking capability, a hard drive, a decent amount of RAM, a Java VM, and all sorts of MPEG playback options. So why not offer a cross-platform, standards-compliant method of streaming videos across the Internet? I mean, LG has already done it with Netflix; why not standardize it?

My reasoning is that there are very few movies I care to buy anymore, really, and I tend to buy movies I've seen and want to watch a few more times. Further, I really hate the idea of buying a cable or satellite plan just to watch two or three regular shows--and many streaming services ALREADY offer the shows I want. The drawback is, of course, that every service seems to do it their own way.

Give me a box I can plug in to an Ethernet jack, and give me a way to access the services I want, and make sure the services are available, and I will run as quickly as possible to get the darn thing, provided it's affordable.

BD Streaming, BD Online, or whatever you want to call it--if Blu-Ray doesn't want to become the next Laserdisc and wants to dominate the marketplace the way DVD dominated, the BDA needs to make streaming video a priority.

Eh, I was just at the local Best Buy. Not only did they have sub-$200 players (actually just display models), but they had discs at $20 apiece, which is about what DVDs were going for when I got my first player. I think that's mostly desperation, but it's also a far cry from $35 per disc.

Now, don't be too hard on those of us who still pop into Best Buy on occasion. Sometimes they'll have a decent deal, and with things slowing down in retail this year, they've been willing to cut deals on the sales floor.

Bah; they're losing, all right. With mainstream press terrorizing people about the looming recession that's been here for nearly three months now (yeah you read that right) that will last all of 6 months but be the worst recession in American history and will have minimum impact yet drop the entire world into a deep recession (yeah I know those contradict) it's time for consumers to tighten their belts and get spending.

I know there's contradiction there. All you have to do is pay attention to major American news outlets to get all that. It's no wonder nobody wants to do anything; the impression is that nobody knows what the frick is going on, and all we know is that banks are doing forced selling to recoup from their bad debt, and buying into energy futures, and anything the Fed does causes further drops in most stocks but rises in energy. Not even reality has affected energy futures, as (surprise!) demand has started to go down.

In short, I hate election years.

And really, all I can do as a private citizen is gripe at my elected officials and wait. If I pull my money out of the bank, and a substantial number of people do it, the banks fail and our money is worthless. If the banks fail and my money's in it, my money's worthless. And every major outlet, including the Wall Street Journal, is screaming at me that the banks will definitely fail. Yeah...some of these same guys probably also thought the tech gravy train and the housing gravy train would never end, so take it with a Texas-sized grain of salt...but do you really think that, in that climate, and with people struggling to pay bills already, that Blu-Ray players and HDTVs are a priority? Only to fools.

Back on task, yeah, I think the BDA is only cutting their own throats by freezing out Chinese manufacturers and by keeping prices high. This is looking to be another DVD-A vs. SACD war...oh well, at least DVDs don't look too bad on my HD-A3. Hopefully it'll hold up a couple of years, eh? ;-)

Eh, it just makes good business sense. If you have a reputation for building junk, and by many reports the 5000 was junk, who's going to spend that kind of money on junk except idiots?

Remember, some of those same idiots that would buy one of these also bought fairly small million-dollar homes with variable-rate mortages and without having the income to support it LOL

In all seriousness, I'm sure other posters hit it on the head; it was likely going to go from expensive to impossible to build dual-format players, and with Toshiba doing the incredibly quick axe of the HD DVD format, it just didn't make good sense anymore.

No, I've not taken advantage of those killer sales yet. I'm still mulling it over. With all the gloom and doom over the economy, I'm a little nervous about spending money on frivolous things...and yeah, I realize that not spending right now only compounds the problem, but like a lot of people, to spend loads of cash right now it'd have to be on credit, which ALSO adds to the problem.

I'm still keeping an eye on falling prices, though. Haven't bought yet, and as I've said here and elsewhere before, I waited a long time for DVD, and I can sure as heck wait for BD. :->

I just feel sorry for anyone who ever bought one of their plasma TVs. Poor deluded fools, actually thinking that plasma was a good idea LOL yeah have fun burning your wall and a shorter life than a picture tube chumps

Same here. I've had nothing but good luck with their MiniDV tapes, and nothing but bad luck with everything else I've ever tried.

Ah, but until retailers throw away their entire stock of players, in front of the world, and until they and/or Toshiba give full refunds PLUS the difference toward a Blu-Ray player, the hatchet job must continue!