Which is probably no choice at all since it's quite likely both formats will also play DVDs, CDs, etc. Back to square one.

I'd choose whichever will pass full HD resolution via analog component outputs, not requiring an HDMI (or DVI/HDCP) digital connection that my TV can't accept. Chances are neither one will because of Hollywood's paranoia about copy protection.

But the truth is that my decision won't much matter because I don't aniticapate being an early enough adopter to influence anything.

Vastly more, the last worldwide numbers I seen were around.

PS2: 90 million
X-box: 22 million
Gamecube: 18 million

I'll take the Red-Ray, Morpheus.

I'd like to think we could all decide, en masse, to support the superior technology and thereby inaugurate a winner that deserves that status... unlike so many previous instances.

But I suspect it won't work. Back when the DVD community was very small, when we were all "early adopters", we couldn't even stop our fellow DVD-philes from renting at Blockbuster, even as Blockbuster was campaigning hard against our interests -- specifically, trying to force full-screen/pan-and-scan transfers, instituting rental windows that would have driven up the cost of a single DVD to around $100 just like VHS, censoring unrated/NC-17 films for release, etc.

Fortunately, the studios foresaw profits from DVD sales as being greater than their licensing fees for rental windows, and companies like Netflix have finally eaten away at Blockbuster's once virtual monopoly on home video, but no real thanks for that are due to we consumers. We simply got lucky in that our interests somewhat coincided with other powerful interests and changes in the market. Let me reiterate that: we got lucky.

Those of us who went through the SACD vs. DVD-A thing have learned a few lessons as well. We took opposing sides, and it seems that both formats lost. SACD will have to be reborn with major industry support if it's ever to establish itself, and DVD-A seems to have given way to the vastly inferior "dual disc". It certainly would behoove us to collectively use the only influence we have - that is, what we choose to purchase/support - but given how vast this community is, including huge numbers of consumers who never visit a board like this, that strikes me as a total impossibility.

seriously, where did this thread come from?

I didn't start buying dvd's till 2002, I will wait till the true standard is fully adopted. All you suckers have fun gambling.

Stop spouting ignorant nonsense. Blu-Ray players will be just as backwards compatible as HD-DVD players.

But how can we choose any particular format over another when some studios are adopting Blue-Ray and others are going with HD-DVD? If you want a movie that's available only in HD-DVD, you don't have much choice in the matter. Either you buy the title, and give support to HD-DVD by doing so, or you refuse.

--THX

Why????

I have not seen it and I am perfectly happy with my current equipment and library of discs. I also would never base my movie watching experience on what a game console can or cannot do.

We should all agree on mass suicide. That'd be more fun and it would probably make headlines.

OK I'm in but you go first

Seriously it HD-DVD and Blu-Ray that are commiting suicide by not coming together with one standard.

I've lived long enough in this world to know that when something should, or is expected to happen, doesn't mean it always will. Odds are that it will but there is nothing set in stone yet. You don't need to be so ignorant, just do some research.

I would be down with BU if this happened and the discs were about the same price as current dvds

HD DVD player and software is expected to be out soon.Even though Blu Ray got thier players early they have yet to make any dent in the marketwith the softwares and Media.Sony created another new format for PSP which really looks like Minidisc Album which never really sold that much cause people just bought normal CD's and then copied the CD's to a blank Minidisc rather than buying the whole album in that format .They cannot even compete with the normal DVD recorders cause the MEDIA is very expensive.So HD-DVD might have a better chance with the consumers if the price is almost same with the current DVD media.No one buys VCR these days in Japan.And DVD recorders are selling a lot and also the Sharp flat screens.

PS3 is going to install MILLIONS of Blu-Ray players into homes before HD-DVD even knows what hit them... I like Toshiba a lot more than Sony, but man are they going to get creamed if they don't comprimise into a single format.

To me it doesn't seem like much of a "war" at all.

If the blu-ray players in PS3 aren't backwards compatible, I think it's a moot point for the war on film dvd format.

Out of the 25 or so PS2 owners I know, every single one of them has a regular dvd player for watching films. The PS2 is only used for games. The fact that they can play movies is a fringe and nothing more. If they couldn't play DVDs, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to them.

Basically, my point is that in my experience game console owners have regular dvd players for their movies, and don't use their console for that function anyway. So, even if the PS3 is a Blu-Ray player, most users wouldn't use it to play their movies anyway - so it doesn't matter WHAT format it is. It would be most likely that the average console owner would probably try to play a current DVD in the unit (if they bothered at ALL), and if it wasn't backwards compatible, and couldn't play the disc, they wouldn't try to play movies in it any more. I seriously don't believe people will buy movies on Blu-Ray just because that's what their PS3 plays.

So while they may win the "console game format war", I think the impact of the film DVD market will be minimal, if that.

That's true now, but when the PS2 first launched I knew a LOT of people that used it as their DVD player. DVD players were more expensive then, and they were able to better justify purchasing a PS2 because it was also a DVD player, thus killing two birds with one stone.

I choose Beta.

I'm going all in and buying a laserdisc player. Who's in?

I choose to save my $1000 and wait till the player prices come down to $100-$150 and are compatible with both formats. I choose to wait till the discs are under $20 to own. I've been a techy fanboy who's jumped on too many early bandwagons and paid the high price for doing so, watching others jump onboard later on and getting their hardware for a fraction of the original cost. Till then I have a wonderful DVD library which looks and sounds good enough to me.

I'm not in any kind of hurry to buy either one.

Yes you do... it's called Standard Definition DVD.

Sadly I just sold my player and all my discs recently. I got 10 solid years out of that format while people were still renting vhs tapes.

You seem to be responding to a quote taken out of context. This thread is about buying Blue-Ray exclusively. And the point I was making was, if the choice in the next generation of home video formats is between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, and you want to buy a movie from a studio that is backing HD-DVD, you have to either buy that movie in that format--thus supporting it--or not have it at all in high definition. That's all I'm saying.

--THX