I just saw the commercial on TV, and later went to work. A lot of people plan on buying this for X-mas. Sony needs to do something about this soon. The price drew them in like moths to a flame. I personally will wait until the dust settles.

I would also like to thank Spyro from brining this deal to my attention. I am now the owner of a new HD-DVD player!

*high five*

Pick any discs? I think the wifey snuck out to score me 300 too

BTW, I swapped the A2 over to HDMI after getting the component DRM screen "DRM blah blah, can't upconvert, switching to 480", fired Sleepy Hallow back up, and the upconverted SD-DVD PQ is really excellent. Maybe not quite the current gen chips, but very good (better than SD P-scan).

Moved the STB over to component till I score an HDMI switcher.

anyone else think that the format war will be of no consequence down the line because all hd media will be downloaded/streamed and stored on high capacity hard drives that connect seamlessly to your home media center?

I'd agree that at some point, buying shiny little disks will become obsolete - I think there's as much of a psychological impediment as there is a tech/bandwidth limitation. Funny you say this, as the wifey and I were talking about "I wonder what our child will be buying for movie content when they're our age" and the first thing I said was "no more physical media you go out and purchase, just massive bandwidth and some kind of localized storage".

Have you used the Netflix on demand? It's pretty decent, and with our plan it's like more than we can use (kind of older or 2nd tier titles, but it was fun during Halloween, free, cheesy horror flicks!!)

~DT

it dosent matter if the units push out, the fact is that more and more movies (newer) are coming to blu-ray and the fact that disney is blu ray is good enough. okay so everyone goes out and buys these hd dvd units....well the movies arent really gonna sell cuz frankley the selection is no where near as good.

Wow, way to not understand anything about the dynamics of the HD content market!

^^^ u refering to me? i work in home theater retail, dont talk me.

Yes I'm referring to you - where you work doesn't matter (especially if you make blanket statements) Home theater retail? What Best Buy? Sound Advice? Private HT? That's terrific, but honestly there are so many more dynamics than you suggest.

I'm not committed to one format or the other - if you took the time to READ I have a UP5000 on deck, even though this was too cheap to pass up.

Do you realize how fragile the Disney relationship is [with Sony]? Have you read the stockholder reports about their considerations for "alternate" HD content providers?

Not to mention that a huge number of mainstay film enthusiast titles are on both formats - now what happens when 100K's of HD-DVD players sell, which format [of dual format offerings] are they going to select? Reverse engineer it - when someone wants major films on HD, which player solution are they going to migrate towards? The familiar DVD based product that's $150, or something called Blueray that's $400? Again, there are major consumer price points and brand recognition; HD just made major gains on both.

The DVD consortium has more power than you think, and with 85-90% of adult content going to HD-D because of the cheaper authoring costs, this is *easily* still anyone's battle. I'm sure you remember Beta, UMD and Minidisk - Sony has a history of pouring millions into R&D and marketing for media formats (including gathering significant partners) only to have them fail.

Again, it's far from over.

~DT

Um... I live next to a mall and I check out stores on my way back from work every week. Blue Ray is there, but so is HD. If you want a dominating presence, it's regular DVD. I can say just by looking around it's going to be another year before any of them gain any decent ground. I can't picture Circuit City removing thousands of movies per store over the next day, let alone the next few months. I also agree with DT. Just look at the percentages.

This is very interesting. So, in its most basic form, its:

Good Movies (Blu-Ray) VERSUS Cheap Hardware (HD DVD)?

no more like

slightly better expensive product vs good cheap product

ok i thought u were talking about me. and im glad u know all the Dynamics, i do as well, but i think people, you included but nothing against you, pay to much attention to what possibly might happen. whats happening now is what matters, and fact is blu ray has better movies now by far. people arent gonna go buy a low price HD dvd player if the movie selection is no where near as good and isnt getting any better. all the great stuff is on and coming to blu ray. are you gonna argue that?

^Seconded. None of you that ran out and bought a cheap HD player thought that there might be a reason they are on sale?

I was saying that neither you nor I know all the complexities of the business behind the current HDM war. I keep up with as much as I can from the various news sources and friends involved in the industry (and try to balance that out with my own business sensibilities).

75% of the movies I will own are on both formats: 300, the Kubrick library, LOTR, etc. Plus there are significant exclusives on both formats. HD-D? Batman Begins, Transformers, Matrix Trilogy, BSG, Heroes, all the Dreamworks/SKG, the Bourne Trilogy, (I'm hearing Potter as and HD-D exclusive? Warner?) etc. There are also major exclusives on BD: Disney/Pixar (this is significant, also see my previous comment), Spiderman (trilogy), Die Hard(s), Ronin, Castaway, some great films.

Barring some simplistic quantity assessment, I'd say the cards are stacked more evenly than not. So the answer is yes, I'll argue that; and yes, that among the 45K+ people bought HD-DVD players (according to the Strategic Partnership manager at Wallymart) there were some who were aware of the available content. Isn't getting better? So when I Am Legend and The Dark Knight get released next year on HD-D only, that's not an improvement? Plus the 100's of titles that will be on BOTH formats?

I'll say this +again+, I plan on migrating the HDA2 I just picked up to the bedroom, and replacing it with a Samsung UP5000 (on order, pushed back to Dec) which is a dual format player (should implement BD Profile 1.1). So I won't really have to worry about exclusives and can choose from the best package for dual format releases, but I still won't disregard HD-D as not being highly competitive.

~DT

So I can apply your same implied logic to the PS3? Sony dropped the price, it must be failing. Come on, that's too easy and poor argument.

Economy of scale as they make/sell more and integrate design/architectur