Originally Posted by
Nightshade
Are you saying HD-DVD is going to die off? Not sure I follow your post correctly.
Blu Ray I can see dying off rather quickly simply because HD-DVD has had a presence in the market for a year or so now and has affordable players (relativley). Because of that presence the likleyhood that HD players will be affordable to all in the near future is much higher.
Then you have the shelves to look at for discs...I have yet to see a BluRay disc on the shelf, but I can go to a dozen stores and find HD discs with many titles.
Another issue as you pointed out is that Sony has a streak of losing formats beginning with Beta in the late 70s early 80s, Atrac, MD, memory stick and the list goes on.
It is going to be interesting to see how this battle plays out and what companies invest in which format. So far if you look at the backers for each it does look like HD-DVD has a majority backing with movie studios.
That losing formats thing is a horrible myth. Beta failed for HOME use because Sony wouldn't let porn be distributed on it, and we all know that, amusingly enough, porn is one of the lead reasons for technological adoption. Beta in professional use was actually the standard up until a few years ago until the advent of affordable DVCAM setups. MD did well in Europe and Japan, just failed here in the US. Memory stick and ATRAC? Those are worthless compared to their market counterparts though.
Blu-Ray is the technologically superior media, and we will see Blu-Ray movies improve in quality over their HD-DVD counterparts once the encoding process is tailored to use the increased space. Also, I see the use of Java in Blu-Ray much more pleasing than the MS alternative in HD-DVD.
Anyways, once dual-media players come out, the clear choice WILL be Blu-Ray. Right now HD-DVD just has a year market lead.