hmurchison, you should have a few HD DVD players by now. After all, you DO work for Toshiba (he really does)!

I guess it must be nice convincing people to through away their hard earned money on the losing format with almost no CE manufactuer support and only 3 out of the 8 major studios supporting it (only on of those is an HD DVD exclusive). Are people just suppose to have player almost no variety in content? Do people buy players for content or just to have players? Blu-ray has 7 out of the 8 major studios releasing content on Blu-ray (5 of the 8 are exclusive to Blu-ray). That's not going to change.

Studios are enjoying the extra security they will be getting from BD+, AACS (cracked), and BD-ROM watermark. HD DVD only offer studios AACS which will continue to be violated as long as the Xbox 360 add-on exists. Pirates already have HD DVD titles on the streets all over the world. Blu-ray discs can't be mass produced by pirates. The studios lost around $3 billion to pirating last year. Security and the added bandwidth and space Blu-ray affords studios is why Fox and Disney are not leaving Blu-ray. Fox and Disney have already noted this (of course it won't stop HD DVD fans from believing differently).

Kevin Murphy said, "But when you get to the store, it's really hard to argue for the $799 player over the $299 one. Five hundred dollars can buy you 20 movies."

You can get a 1080P Blu-ray from Amazon for under $490 shipped. HD DVD movies are about $5 more expensive than Blu-ray movies on average. If you are buying a good deal of HD DVD movies, how long do you think it would take to make up the difference in the player prices? The real cost is in the titles...not the player.

Blu-ray is out selling HD DVD by over 500,000 discs and climbing. At this rate, the disc sales gap should be around 1.5 million by the end of this year. HD dVD is getting smashed in the rest of the world (yes...even Europe). There are less than 12,000 standalone players in Europe (HD DVD and Blu-ray combined). Now there are over 900,000 PS3s. Why would you try to deceive these good people into thinking something else? That's just shameful!

I don't want a lesser delivery system...period. That lesser delivery system is HD DVD.

I'm glad Blu-ray outsold HD DVD by 500,000 discs in the first quarter of this year (no...Neilsen Videoscan numbers does not count free discs). At that rate, the disc sales gap should be 1.5 million in favor of Blu-ray by the end of the year.

What HD DVD fans fail to realize is Blu-ray crossed the 1 million mark a month ago. They are past 1.2 million disc sales. HD DVD still isn't at 1 million after more than a year. The gap is getting wider and wider. In Feb., Blu-ray had a 1,000 disc Since Inception sales lead (2 months ago). Then, the gap grew to 40,000 to 135,000, to greater than 262,000 disc sales lead. Plus, this is just the US numbers.

Blu-ray now has the lead on every continent it's in around the world (yes, that includes Europe). If you want to see the big picture, look at the worldwide sales of Blu-ray discs vs. HD DVD discs. That sales gap would be A LOT WIDER than 800,000 discs in Blu-ray's favor. Plus, Blu-ray titles are on average cheaper than HD DVD titles (check eproductwars.com). You can buy a new 1080p Blu-ray player for around $480 shipped from Amazon.

Remember, it is not ration to want to keep the superior technology (check you specs HD DVD fans) from being adopted. I guess the saying is true. Crazy people don't know they're crazy.

This is great news for Blu-ray!!! More players=more disc sales. BD has more titles, and more studio support so they'll benefit more from this than HDDVD.
DO you think this will help HDDVD much when alot of the discs (combo's)cost $5 more because they have the standard def dvd on the otherside. People buying these are obviously trying to get away from that aren't they???

If this was a standalone Sammy HDDVD player, i'd say BD had something to worry about, but as it sits...this only helps universal pictures and the BDA.

It is probably because the HD DVD players are cheap already. 100 buck off is not as much of a story as a unit with a $800 retail price going for $499.

IMO, HD DVD is not worth the price anymore. Any price for a dying format is too much to pay.

I guess some people just don't know the truth. Alex must have read the Cruch Gear article that's full of deception.

The truth is the 200,000 HD DVD players are not all standalones. They added the HD DVD add-ons, laptops, and standalones in that number. Then, they compared all of that against just the Blu-ray standalone sales. The Nielsen VideoScan numbers already said the standalone player sales were just about even a couple months ago.

I guess the HD DVD camp has yet another loyal BLIND member that will swallow any crap they want him to. ROFLMAO

"Until Sony allows porn on BRD, HD-DVD is still the clear leader . . ."

That means Blu-ray has been the clear leader for some time now. There has been porn on Blu-ray last year in Japan (2 titles to be exact) and a title coming out from Vivid around March 28.

I guess you just did know. Definitely sounds like an HD DVD supporter to me.

"Sony was supposed to originally ship 2M PS3s into the market during the 4th quarter and actual numbers (given they had under 200K at launch) may be closer to 400K. And with a recall possible there is a chance they might not even make that."

Sony shipped and sold over 1.4 million PS3s worldwide (www.vgcharts.org).

175,000 HD DVD device versus over 1 million Blu-ray capable devices in North America. I guess the math is not working for you. It has already started to reflect in the HD movie sales.

"If you have a 1080i-capable television (that would be many older HD sets), you may be dismayed to learn that 720p PS3 titles will not upscale to fit the resolution. Instead, 720p titles will always be downsized to 480i or 480p."

That use to be a problem. Stop living in the past. The glory days of HD DVD has past (from Apr. to Nov.).

The Xbox 360s can only be counted for HD DVD if you purchase an add-on drive (for the other post made earlier).

"Finally, HP who had been a big Blu-Ray supporter and dominates the Media Center PC market, introduced a $100 HD DVD upgrade for their PCs"

I guess it's great to have a drive that can't burn a HD DVD disc (ROFLMAO)! The actual drive cost is around $450+ (and it doesn't burn HD DVDs). The Blu-ray PC drive is about $1 more expensive than building a HD DVD laptop (and the Blu-ray drives actually burn Blu-ray discs).

"As a result, even though we feel that HD DVD is providing a better product and user experience, the Bluray format is being "artificially protected" in spite of it's poor performance"

The overall picture and sound quality of Blu-ray has past HD DVD. You are still living in the past! This is 2007, not June 2006! Blu-ray is absolutely killing HD DVD in the audio department.

"All Sony has is the Studios behind them. And yet, It appears that some of those studios are releasing HD-DVD titles as well."

Not Sony...the BDA (it consists of 170 companies). The BDA also has CE companies behind them. You need both to be the winner of a format war and Blu-ray has both. Actually, the two studios that are releasing on both formats were originally for HD DVD. Warner Bros was forced to support Blu-ray by Turner Network (which owns them and New Line Cinema). That is one of the reasons why the Blu-ray versions of the Warner Bros. titles have not had the same audio tracks available. That will no longer be the case going forward.

Speaking of going forward, you might want to that as well and get out of the past.

"In fact HD-DVD has already won. All that the general public wants is a cheap HD-DVD player. Not a $1,000 Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is a losing cause for Sony (like so many of their other ventures from Beta, Mini-Disk, UMD, MemoryStick etc.)"

There is a Blu-ray player for $500 (PS3), a standalone for $570 (Samsung BDP1000-Amazon), and a player for $600 (PS3 60GB). These are all 1080p player (I have the 60GB PS3 for movies). The PS3 update in March should include 1080p/24 playback and a very solid upscaling among a lot of other things.

The Xbox 360 is not an accurate upscaler according to ISF techs.

Sony formats that almost everyone has (successful formats for the slow): CDs, miniDV, DV, Hi8, and part credit for DVDs. The CD is one of the most used formats on the planet, but yet all of Sony's formats failed? Idiots!

You guys will probably think HD DVD still has a chance even after they are being pulled from the shelves. Stay in your pretend world.

The number 1 and 2 titles being sold in Hi-Def are Blu-ray titles. Blu-ray disc sales have jump 700% since the release of the PS3! Yet, HD DVD fans still say no one is using the PS3 as a Blu-ray player! "Welcome to the real world." When your eyes start to hurt, the Blu-ray supporters will say: "It's because you never used them before. Be patient. The answers are coming."

hmurchison, I thought you were for Blu-ray. I guess all that talk on the Blu-ray forum were lies. Enjoy the reigning champs (Blu-ray) for the better format.

Of course, anyone with foresight could have seen this coming. I guess we now know those that lack vision (HD-DVD supporters).