http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7176185.stm

As soon as the blank discs are cheaper I'll be buying one.

unless they release star wars

no i agree, i think blu ray will emerge the victor

The sooner we get a winner the better off everyone will be.

I want to buy a HiDef player but will not now until there is either one winner or the dual players become less than £200.

I bought a HD player on Saturday & took it back on Sunday after the news about Warner Bros.

I felt a lot more confident when i bought a film on Blu-ray today than before,due to it feeling that they have almost sown up the HD Disc market

Can't come quick enough for me

whilst I think Blu-ray will emerge the victor... I covered both..I have a Samsung BD-P1400 (£280) Blu-ray and a Toshiba HD-EP 10 (£150) HD-DVD. cost of both still cheaper than a dual format player ... and with the issue of firware up grades it is simpler to keep them separate (I hope!)

Well, they would say that wouldn't they?



( I think they'll probably win, too )

If I had a shop and you came back cause you had changed your mind I would have told you to bugger off!! or was it from Argos?

Its not my rules that allow people to change there mind, also if I had of seen the announcemen first I would never had bought the player.

Why should I get stuck with a HD player that may only be good for Std Def DVD in a year or so.

It was from Tesco

These days I don't think it really matters as much as it did with video recorders, when there was a plethora of different types - phillips 2000 (I think), vhs, betamax, ad infinitum. I believe there is sufficient flexibility within the market place these days for both to freely exist.

A dual format computer drive is only £130 - all right, it's a bit more than current multi-format DVD recorders, but look at the fact that there are at least 3 DVD formats that are coexisting quite happily, at least as far as writing is concerned.

I predict (But what do I know?) that we won't see such a big fight this time around, the dual format drives will win out because of their flexibility. I think the war is between drive types, rather than actual media, and to that end dual/multi-format drives will be the deciding factor.

Dual format high definition drives will start to appear on PC/Computer based media centres with a "couldn't care less what it is - Broadcast/DVD/HDDVD/Blu-Ray/MP3/CD/avi/etc. etc. ad infinitum....." attitude. I can present it to you for just £250 all in. And frankly, £250 will be expensive for such a device, home based system builders can already do it - I have and with all the audio and video trimmings to boot.

I don't even need a HD-Ready TV - just a big LCD monitor and a dongle (HD Fury).

So, no need to fight this one comrades, brothers & sisters, mothers and fathers, grannies and grandads - everyone wins.

Just to add a porn studio Digitalplayground has switched from HD DVD to Blu Ray story on link

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/08...-to-the-plate/

With classy supporters like the porn industry Blu-Ray is sure to cum-out on top.

What a great headline, "PS3 owners demand porn..."

However, just to be pedantic.... they already had porn, as Digitalplayground were format neutral and are now dropping HD-DVD support.

All points toward the end for HD-DVD though.

Not as silly a comment as it seems.

iirc the porn industry is one of the reasons VHS won that format war

Yes but we didn't have the internet back then, which completely dwarfs physical media these days in terms of porn.

Indeed.
Porn is still a multi-billion dollar business but is the first content that really does not need physical media to survive, the internet was really made for porn

Still it all adds to the PR offensive.

Now we've reached the tipping point it looks like support for HD-DVD is collapsing very quickly...

This from thedigitalbits at the CES:

Additional news from CES, this time from Microsoft.

http://stuff.tv/News/CES-Microsoft-d...s-HD-DVD-blow/

I'm disturbed by the use of the words 'porn' and 'dwarfs' in the same sentence.

Blu Ray's gonna win! Yay!

I think the one that sells movies the cheapest will have a better chance of overall success. But I'm far from backing down on my prediction that BOTH will survive. We'll just get dual format drives which will drop so much in price as to make the formats equally viable.

I used to think both could coexist happily too, however dual format players simply aren't showing up in the market quickly enough (and certainly not at a budget that the mainstream public will get on board with) - and since all the studios are now only supporting one format, and of course not the same one (so far at least) - you have to accomodate both formats if you want a full range of films in HD. That simply isn't practical for Joe Public with the current dual-format player prices (and I'm pretty sure Joe Public isn't interested in having two separate boxes under his TV - that's something that only the really keen movie buff/early adopters are doing).

Furthermore there has been so much publicity about "the format war" and the parallel's with VHS vs Betamax (even though it's not really the same situation at all), that many consumers are just steering clear of the HD formats altogether until there is a clear winner - just in case they back 'the wrong format' and get stuck with a load of films that they may not be able to watch once their current player dies. What Warner have also found is that consumers are holding off buying DVDs too until they know which HD format to buy so that they don't end up forking out for films twice.

It's really been a rather sorry state of affairs for months now, but finally it is beginning to look like we may have one format emerging as the dominant one. This can only be a good thing for mainstream acceptance by the public. If and when the remaining two HD DVD-only studios (Universal and Paramount) make the switch to Blu (or at least go format-neutral and release on both), then consumers will finally be able to buy with confidence knowing that the Blu-Ray format will continue to be fully supported by the hardware manufacturers.

This is a war that has basically been decided in movie studio boardrooms rather than by consumers (unlike VHS vs Betamax) - and personally I think Paramount have been the worst culprits in terms of prolonging this mess as when they went from neutral to HD DVD only they were actually going against the overall market trend and threw their weight behind the format with the least amount of studio support. Had they gone the other way then no doubt Warner would have followed suit much sooner, and this 'war' would have probably been decided before Christmas. As things stand now we still may not have a clear winner even by next Christmas if Paramount and Universal continue to stay off Blu-ray, and consumers will continue to avoid buying into either format.

Paramount will shortly announce Bluray releases and that will leave Universal on their own with HD DVD.... and that can't last.

HD DVD is a dead duck...

What about those Xbox360 with their HD-DVD drives... can't they sustain the HD-DVD market?

There are far fewer Xbox add-on drives than there are PS3s. I'm pretty sure standalone HD DVD players are a lot more common than the Xbox add-on too, but even they don't seem to be able to keep things going for HD DVD.

The problem isn't with there being enough players to sustain the market - it's the studio support that is lacking, which in turn means less people buying HD DVDs. The number of Blu-ray media sold over the Christmas period was significantly higher than HD DVD (3:1 in the US if the reports are to be believed), which is why Warner decided to support that format over HD DVD (and studio support was already more in favour of Blu-ray too - despite Paramount's move to HD DVD only last year).