I can't imagine any of this will be around much longer (HD DVD or Blu-ray). It seems like it won't be long until it's practical to rent, download and watch HD movies on HD tvs hooked up to our pcs. I would love to get rid of all my home entertainment stuff and my dvd collection and not have to deal with that stuff anymore.

Digital downloads(often cited by those claiming both formats are dead) are still a long way from from offering real HD movie solution.

A: Real HD quality movies are 20GB+ Not the 5GB artifact filled garbage that is sold as HD by download services. Go read some comments about the quality of overcompressed HD downloads.

B: Internet capacity usage is capped by a large number of ISPs often at less than 100GB/month. See A.

C: Internet connections for the most commons DSL connections are often close to 1-3 Mb/s. Cable around 3-7 Mb/s. See A.

Of all my friends with high speed the fastest guy on Cable gets a sustainged 600KB/s. 1G/600K = 28 minutes. That 20GB real high quality movie would take about 10 hours to download on the fastest connections. Hardly reasonable. Not to mention a couple of movies and he would blow his download cap.

Basically there is no infrastructure to deliver high quality movies. On top of that unless it is much cheaper I would much rather have the physical medium, rather than fill my disk up with 20GB movies and a backup drive as well.

Medium quality rentals maybe but we are a long long way from real high quality HD movies. Talk to me when fiber to the home is common with unlimited usage.

Oh yeah, and to all those who said that porn would decide this format war....you are, were, and remain, idiots. :P

This just in: the new SuperDvD format with extra extra high definition will be hitting shelves this summer. Microsoft has vowed to create its own format to compete.

I remember reading not long ago that all of WB's HD-DVDs were leagues ahead of their Blu-Ray ones in terms of added extras? I guess that didn't show any commitment to the format.

Considering the tiny proportion of the market that's HD disc sales, it seems to be more about 'will Sony or Toshiba offer us more money to go exclusive?' really. Even if they say it's not.

I can't believe Sony is going to win this one. I was kind of hopping that a "none of the above" would popup. I would really like to see the spinning disk get replaced by some solid state media.

I was backing HD-DVD but I'm just glad there'll be a single format again. This stupid format war was far worse than the DVD+/DVD- fiasco because it affected players not just writers, making content exclusive.

As a consumer you had to be pretty dedicated/frivolous/shortsighted to buy into either format because some content would likely be exclusive to the format you didn't buy.

The consensus amongst people who know more than me is that Blu-ray is better for everyone in the long-term. Now it's up to the HD-DVD camp to recover fast and find a way to compete in the optical market.

"MPAA/RIAA would so love to get rid of physical media for mainstream stream if it was economically feasible. The reason? It is a lot harder to pirate, they have more control over content, it is possible to setup a licensing model etc."

you mean like mp3's? LOL! your suggestion is a pirate's dream !

woops, suppose to be a reply to #6

Hey, what about Pr0n studio?
I don't care much about WB.
lol

*R.I.P. HD-DVD *
--January 2008--

Shot in the back by Warner Bros.

Not happy that the winner will be Sorny, but the sooner this gets settled, the better. (for consumers) Personally, I'm not buying a next-gen DVD player until there is a clear winner.