Def in.

They already charge $20,000 for a DVD system, and those are only 9GB at most. Blu-ray has discs 50GB in size. How much storage are they going to be able to offer? How are they going to get next gen audio codecs to work?

I don't think this is coming any time soon.

Not entirely true. Read my comment.

What about HTPCs?

There is still no bitstream solution at all. So there is no way to get your receiver to decode any of the lossless codecs if you have an HTPC. There is a new motherboard chipset from Intel, the G35 which can do 7.1 LPCM over HDMI. Problem is, there are only 2 pieces of software that can play Blu-ray and HD-DVD. One is Power DVD Ultra, unfortunately it downsamples everything to 16/48 before sending it to the driver. The new player, ArcSoft Total Media Theatre does not downsample, but it also does not work with G35 motherboards.

The only other way to get the new codecs from an HTPC are analog connections. As previously stated, ArcSoft is the only player that won't downsample your audio.

The perfect solution does not exist yet, but its getting there.

The new Intel G35 motherboard chipset supports 7.1 LPCM audio over HDMI. That with an LG BD/HDDVD drive and a Q6600 CPU and you're all set. You get full 1080p video with HD sound and no stuttering.