Blu Ray over/under $

Just back from CES myself, saw no apparent quality difference between hd-bluray. However anybody I talked to promoting hd-dvd was very defensive sounding while the blu-ray folks said "done-deal, no contest". There are significant mass-storage advantages to blu-ray. But MOST IMPORTANT I feel is the publics acceptanceof a neat sounding word like Blu-Ray, much better than trying to say HD-DVD.....This simple name of a format thing is much ignored...Try saying SACD to a record store clerk and their eyes glaze over, DVD-Audio was better but still stupid, could have been called cd-plus or something and gone over much better as an audio format, just my 2cents worth, Mike.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6142137.html

It looks as if XBOX is saying if HD fails...they will then have add on B/R players.
Some of the Xbox 360 owners had said that MS was probably hedging there bets and/or not having full faith in HD....looks like they were right.

wow the new formats are failing already and SACD is still releasing new software and players.

Thanks Ears...just as I suspected. The key thing is ability & motivations of the two consortiums. HD-DVD camp is led by Toshiba OK, but the two other important mfrs are NEC and Sanyo. NEC is already hedging its bets and purchased a 45% equity stake in a Sony Blu Ray JV. Sanyo is going through a large restructuring excecise due to a lack of profitability. Also note that its not just about DVDs and home entertainment but high capacity storage in recorders and PCs: HP, Dell and Sony are from the IT side of the equations supporting Blu Ray with many others as well all leaning that way. Microsoft is supporting HD DVD for now but only as an optional add on to X Box 360 and the primary reason for supporting it is to battle PS3: but their key issue is market share of X Box itself and narrowing the gap: besides all lose money on the game machines and make money on the games themselves with the long-term objective making these game machines the center of home entertainment systems and digital home at large: thus the standard of Optical Disk Drives is less of a strategic issue for Microsoft and they will end up supporting both as add ons if needed. But for Blu Ray, Sony has developed it and spend R&D etc: there is much more committment: note also Sony is market leader in the ODD market at large: its not just about DVD players. Finally for Intel, again may not a big issue anyway: X Box, Ps3 and the upcoming Nintendo's Revolution all moved from Intel to IBM architecture anyway.

So expect a war during 2006-7 but ultimately the writing is on the wall.

The writing is far from being on the wall for all of the reasons I have enumerated, but time will tell. I only hope that ONE of the two formats makes it as far as DVD titles. The DVD rental market is very important in this. If BlockBuster and Netflix, for example, elect not to purchase Hi Def DVD titles in the volume they would need to satisfy customers, for example, hi def DVDs for the rental market won't make it. This is only one example of some significant scenarios that could easily torpedo the Hi Def DVD. Blu-Ray cost for players and disks right now is a guarnteed loser. But that could change.

I bought a DVD player at Sears for 32 dollars about a month ago for a back up CD player in one of my casual listening systems. But it plays DVDs just fine. 32 dollars vs 1800 or 1000. Last year, new vinyl outsold SACD and DVD-A combined. Let's see what happens.... ( BTW- niether side will do well at the beginning of release dates for sure)