Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

"We should support the striking writers...why?

I don't think we know enough about how they are currently compensated or how they should be compensated to throw support one way or another."

Wrong. We know exactly how they are currently compensated, as well as their requests. Please read up on the current compensation details available in about a million places online. Ignorance is no excuse for attacking workers.

"The ability for a group to go on strike is a fundamental right in American, and while we don't really understand what the problem is -- we'd assume the writers want more money -- we do know we're going to miss out on some HD programming."

The strike is for residuals. In essence, the writers want more money from DVDs and online content, and they're being screwed over. Just as an example, for DVDs, the writers get 0.3%--yes, three-tenths of a percentage point--of the revenue, or something like 4 cents per DVD set sold. How much are they asking for? A whole 8 cents. That's just one example of how the studios are real buttmunches. BTW, your average writer makes less than $30k a year (many make less), despite the media's claims that this is all millionaires. Unsurprising, since most of the companies being picketed own huge media outlets.

Fans of BSG, Heroes, and many other shows should know that the majority of the writing staff (including most showrunners) are on the picket line, and you should support them the best you can. Here's a list (by no means complete) where most or all of the staff, including producers, showrunners, and actors, have gone on strike:

Battlestar Galactica
Heroes
Smallville
24
The Office (Steve Carrell is supporting the strike)
Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice
The Shield
The Unit
CSI/CSI Miami (several actors are also on the picket line)
All flavors of Law & Order
The Simpsons (including James L Brooks)
SNL/30 Rock (Tina Fey and most SNL actors are on the picket line)
Letterman/Leno (both stars publicly support their writers 110%)
Daily Show/Colbert Report (again, both stars give full support)
Ellen Degeneres
Scrubs
Desperate Housewives
Lost (both showrunners/main writers are on the picket line)
Dirty Sexy Money
Brothers & Sisters
Old Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus is picketing)
Dexter
The 4400

In addition, Paul Haggis (Bond 22 writer), Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), and a bunch of others are picketing.

The ignorance based on blind Sony hatred paid for (more or less) by Toshiba and Microsoft continues...

"I don't care if Betamax is selling THREE times more than HD DVD - you can still count me in the HD DVD camp because it isn't a Sony format (Memory Stick, MiniDisc, UMD, microMV, on and on...)."

So you don't listen to CDs and have never used a CD-ROM? You don't use optical and coaxial audio for surround sound? You refuse to use any form of portable audio device, and care nothing for HDTV in the US or Japan? Those are all products brought to you by Sony, either alone, or with at least one equal partner (Philips, in the case of CDs, SPDIF surround audio, and, yes, Blu-ray).

So, make up your mind: are you essentially stuck to phonographs or are you just spouting the Toshiba/MS party line?

"The successor to the DVD format should be decided by the standards body that was put together to decide it. That would be the DVD forum."

The DVD Forum is not a standards body, it's a corporate promotion group set up initially by--surprise!--Toshiba. It also includes every single Blu-ray manufacturer, who after essentially being forced by Warner (under Lieberfarb directed by Toshiba) to use Toshiba's format, developed and announced Blu-ray *before* HD DVD, a fact conveniently omitted by most HD DVD supporters.

"I say this due to lack of supporting documents and links for the claims. All I really see are comments repeated over and over like; the claim is wrong, false, FUD, etc..., but where is the proof?"

EngadgetHD only allows 3 links, but below are a bunch of supporting documents, for the standalone claims, for the online sales claims, and whatever else people want to claim is just "nuh-uh". I can safely assume that those who are posting falsehoods like "20:1 standalone ratio" or "sales don't count online/Amazon" have no evidence, because there isn't any to support them.

Search Engadget HD for:
Best Buy tops retailers in packaged HD media sales
Sony says standalone Blu-ray players are outselling HD DVD players
HD DVD standalone players sales are back on top
NPD Group reports on HD disc format adoption

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/documents/docurama_whitepaper.pdf
"Nielsen Video Scan (these numbers, while they include traditional on-line retailers such as Amazon, also include Specialty Mass Merchants including Costco, Best Buy, Circuit City. A significant portion of these sales, however, also encompass online � ie. Costco.com, BestBuy.com, etc�)"

http://www.people.hbs.edu/aelberse/papers/hbs_07-015.pdf
"Data Source: Nielsen VideoScan

In our empirical analysis, we study home video market in the period from 2000 to 2005. Our data come from Nielsen VideoScan, a leading provider of information on video sales. Nielsen VideoScan tracks weekly sales for video titles sold in the United States. Sales are split by DVD and VHS formats. They can also be broken down by channel: �discount mass stores� (e.g., Kmart, Shopko, and Target), �drug stores� (e.g., CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens), �grocery stores� (e.g., Abertson�s, Pathmark, and Safeway), �specialty retail� (e.g., Blockbuster, Hollywood Entertainment, and Suncoast), and �other mass stores,� which covers both offline (e.g., Best Buy, Circuit City, and Costco) and online stores (e.g., Amazon.com, and Borders.com)."

"Depending on which stat you believe the PS3 and the handful of Blu-ray standalones are 10 to 20 times the number of HD DVD capable devices."

Like I said above, I don't know whose statistics you're using, because NPD, the HD DVD PRG and BDA all agree that the numbers are much much closer. It's actually dead even on standalones, and about 4 to 1 for *capable* players, although the studios admit that the "attach rate" actually puts it back to dead even again.

If you'd bothered to check this site (among others), there's a gazillion news items that state all of this. It just makes you look foolish to pull BS from nowhere.

"So are these numbers "sold to consumers" or "sold to stores," because there's a HUGE difference between the two. I know Sony played the "We shipped 40 billion PS3s!" but ignored the fact that 39.99 billion of them didn't sell. Is this similar?"

Nope. Nielsen only counts point-of-sale numbers, in other words, it's only "at the register". There's several lists of where they get their numbers, which includes just about every big-box store and department store, including Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, Albertson's, and a whole bunch of others. The only notable store missing is Wal-mart. Before HD DVD fanboys attempt to scream "that's the whole market!", it's not. Best Buy is currently the leader, with Amazon and Circuit City both in the top 5 along with Wal-mart. Which brings us to...

"Nielson doesn't take account of on-line sales, does it?"

Nice try, but completely false. Among the online sales counted by Nielsen is Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, CircuitCity.com, Borders.com, and a host of others.

"If you look there's an interesting correlation between Nielson and DVD Empire with a 2 week lag."

Nope. This theory was disproven multiple times over at AVS. There is no correlation between Amazon, DVD Empire, and/or Nielsen.

"No matter what the Blu-ray cheer-leaders say HD DVD is doing very nicely with a hell of a lot less players out there than Blu-ray."

Wrong again. The number of standalone players is roughly equal.

"IIRC it's between 10 - 20 times the number of Blu-ray capable players that Blu-ray has over HD DVD and yet they are only holding a 60:40 lead?"

Yet more FUD that has been disproven time and again. At this point, the Blu-ray/HD DVD *capable* ratio is at best, 4:1. Using the calculations from the studios themselves, the "player" number is actually almost dead even.

"Must be those appalling Blu-ray attachment rates."

Again, put down the kool-aid. The "attach rate" myth is hardly used by the HD DVD faithful anymore.

"The end is coming when the $149 HD DVD players hit this X-mas (and the $100 HD DVD players hit in Easter) & take off in the mass-market."

Sorry to burst your bubble (actually, I'm not), but the $150 holiday season and $100 Easter players just aren't going to happen. You *might* hit $200, but only on last-generation fire sales.

"Blu-ray just can't compete on price & they have less available and exclusive movie content."

Huh? They're competing on price already, considering that standalone sales are pretty much even. To reverse your own argument on you, even if Blu-ray players cost twice as much, they should be selling half as well. Actual sales figures show that's not happening. As for available content, there's multiple points of evidence that show that, even with Paramount as an exclusive, both neutral and exclusive Blu-ray studios have a large availability advantage over HD DVD, especially the exclusive studios.

"It's going to be mainly a PS3 proprietary format as UMD is to PSP."

Already disproven, but I guess you just needed an exclamation point to how off-base and false the rest of your post was.

"I'm not sure what happened to the memo from top NBC brass, after the iTunes negotiations broke down, saying that Apple was firma non grata... but it clearly didn't make it to the production offices of Chuck"

It might help to know that the production offices of "Chuck" are at Warner Bros, not NBC Universal. Thanks to the incestuous studio & TV system, a lot of TVshows are not made by the partners or parents of the network they air on, i.e. "My Name is Earl" is made by Fox but is on NBC, "HIMYM" is also from Fox but is on CBS, "Nip/Tuck" is from Warner but on F/X, etc...

Do a search for this guy and you'll see where he's pulling this crap out of.

* He was and is a paid consultant for Microsoft.
* He's extremely anti-opensource.
* He's fond of making crazy "announcements" (i.e. Apple will die, Wal-mart rumors)

Why anyone still hires him to write is beyond me, although I wouldn't be surprised if he (like Paramount) is paid off.

It's new LED displays, not LCD.