Blu-Ray and HD DVD


I want to upgrade my dvd player and there are a lot of nice choices out there right now. However, I'm concerned that whatever I buy now will be obsolete in a few months when blu ray (HD DVD?) hits the market. Am I missing something or is now the time to wait instead of plunking down serious cash on a player that isn't HD compatible? Also, am I mistaken in thinking that blu-ray = HD DVD?
tonyp54
I have an extensive collection of movies on standard DVD, so I hope the new Blue Ray players will accomodate the millions of people like me who have invested heavily in DVD's. My understanding is, however that the Sony Blue Ray machine will do no such thing, whereas the Panasonic version of this format will.

I suppose we could go through the hassle of recording all our movies to the Blue Ray disks, but how inconvenient is that!!! Sony and the rest of these goofballs need to think about the CONSUMER and not just their precious technology!
This months Perfect Vision and HDTV etc magazines have alot of information about this subject.
I'm with Albert, no matter how this plays out, I'll be excited to watch the process and outcome.
I throw my bet on a combined product solution. Either the players...or...the discs.

AT CES I thought HD-DVD had the more impressive marketing roll out and the product was excellent. Several HD-DVD player prototypes were out for viewing as was a demo of HD-DVD of "I Robot". I thought HD-DVD would win out until Apple signed on with Blue ray...

Unless they come up with a combined solution they could in theory both lose out. WE'll see.

Wonder how this will effect Netflix pricing
Dawgbyte, Albert posted this info about Blu-Ray:

While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM use a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup and allow playback of CDs and DVDs.

It will be compatible with the current DVD's you own. Nothing sinister going on here just "progress":-)