If you could have your choice of only one player for "free", which would it be?

I am not going to discuss prices at all or it will ruin the effects of the pole. This is simply pick one or the other if you could have one right now.

Just want to see what the popular option is.

How about a player that plays BOTH? There's a crazy idea

Chances are two formats are never going to last past a year or two. At least not on an eventual mainstream level.

So, dual players are nice. But, this is a one or the other pole.

I just want to get a basic idea of what the popular option is. It will be interesting to look back next year to see who was right or who is in the lead. Of course considering either is still here. But, I do believe one of the formats will last.

P.S. I just remember everyone saying that the Nintendo D.S. would bomb, but yet it turned out to be wildly successful and a very popular system.

Thats why I like creating threads like these to look back on.

In terms of video quality, which is my primary concern, I don't think one format has much of an advantage over the other. I'd lean more towards Blu-ray based on purely technical specs, but I don't really care which one wins. I plan on buying into both.

Ok I'll say HD since it has the backign of the studios that I own about 80% of the DVDs from

Hd-dvd.

I picked Blu-Ray, only because of the larger number of studios backing them. I realize that can change in a moments notice.

I would actually pick both if that was an option. I think if dual-format players can get off the ground, both formats will survive (like DVD+R and DVD-R).

I chose HD DVD. I don’t think it matters that more Studios are backing BR at this point. If HD is selling tons more players than BR, the Studios will change their greedy minds. Trust me.

I would prefer Blu-ray Disc.

• As I understand it BD has the support of all the major studios except for Universal.

• The discs have higher capacity.

• I believe that BD was reported at one time to be using a scratch and dust resistant coating, hope this is true. (I am afraid that the short wavelength blue laser will be sensitive to minor disc damage and dust and I hope that the coating will work.)

The initial price of the players is irrelevant to me since I expect prices to drop rapidly and I will wait to see how things shake out. So far, the titles announced on either format don't hold much appeal, so waiting is the best option. Objections to Sony using MPEG-2 for its initial discs strikes me as silly. Properly done using a significantly higher bit rate, the PQ should be fine. It just won't be as efficiently compressed as it might be with the newer codecs but the disc capacity ought to be plenty for a good MPEG-2 I would think. Although that depends on how much space is wasted on extras.

I have little interest in extras, especially the interactive stuff. I just want movies or TV shows with picture and sound that take full advantage of my HT setup.

If HD-DVD were to win the format war that would be ok too. Either format should have decent HD picture and sound if properly mastered. I just would prefer to not to have to buy both and end up with "orphan" discs for the losing format.

I eagerly await reviews of actual HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs and players.

The studios have said they will switch with whichever is the winner(HD-DVD obviously), so it's not like it will be some suprise.

Sony has had better quality stuff when it's been in format wars before and they just don't win on the end.

Consumers are going to go for the cheaper price and if BR can't get the prices around the same then they will be gone.

No preference. HD-DVD does seem the better way to go in the beginning simply because of cost. I would rather pay $500 for a low end player than $1000.

If all things are equal when I decide to take the plunge cost wise I'll go with the one with the stronger library and at this point that favors Blu-Ray.

Sony propensity for proprietary hardware and considered failures

Beta
Sony MiniDisk
Sony computer hardware: works only in Sony computers
Sony anti-piracy software turned spyware
Sony CD's: Defeated by yellow highlighter

Now I won't dismiss the winners like Walkman, Playstation series and other products. From my personal experience as a techie and personal user of their products, they tend to break down consistantly, they are propietary in nature and/or invasive to my computer. Innovative yes...cost effective and end user friendly no.

I want a product that will play in a Windows enviroment and allow me flexibility to play this media anywhere.

Besides, the HD DVD logo looks like the standard DVD logo and will tie in better to the publics mindset for digital media.

If Sony could have had the PS3 ready on time it would have killed HD-DVD...
HD-DVD over $1000
PS3 @ $500
& most big movies are going to be done in both....

now all bets are off

Honestly don't care. I'll eventually upgrade to whichever wins out (assuming one does and has full software support rather than being a niche market item) down the road when I have an HDTV and players and discs cost the same as DVD players and discs today.

I'm for Blu-Ray just because it can hold more than HD. If HD could hold more, then I'd be for it.

What do you mean by this? One of Toshiba's day-1 HD-DVD players has a $499 MSRP.

HD-DVD

Sony is getting to full of themselves, they need another betamax style beatdown.

If the storage capacity on an HD-DVD is more than sufficient to hold an HD movie in excellent quality, what does it matter to you whether a Blu-Ray disc can hold more? With any digital compression scheme, there's a point of diminishing returns after which more disc space gains you little or nothing.

Titanic (European edition) takes 4 dual-layer discs. That's more than 30GB, and it's only SD.

And the studios will want to avoid multidisc sets as much as possible, considering that the main benefit of the new interactivities is the ability to navigate seamlessly from the feature to the bonus material, which is obviously impossible if you move the extras to a second disc.

So the Blu-ray producers will be able to put all the material they want on the disc without having to compromise the feature audio/video bitrate.

My one concern that I have not seen discussed much is disc durability. I understand that Durabis is being used to make Blu-Ray discs scratch resistant so this may not be any more of a concern than with current DVDs, but I don't want to have my 50GB discs ruined by a minor scratch or scuff.

Also I don't think brining up Beta or Mini Disc really has much of an impact on whether or not Sony will succeed. Sony has had some disasters, but it seems anytime they are working together with Phillips on something the technology is excellent.

I love it.

The OP started a poll specifically which asks you to make the assumption that the players are free, and HD-DVD folks immediately bring up the player costs. I've only seen one commenter who actually said something meaningful for the HD-DVD side, which was Canadian Bacon.

Here's a good flag to find out if your bias is showing in a thread:

a) Mention price when it is specifically asked to be a non-factor
b) Use a personal prediction of the future to justify an opinion of the present.

And I should know

How is price a bias. That is a legitimate concern for someone making a plunge into a new format. BTW, I clearly said in my post:
That is within the framework the original poster asked for and I'm hardly showing a bias towards HD DVD.

I loved Laserdisc and DVD. Both sort of just came to be and didn't have all this harsh competition. Laserdisc was a nitch market for videophiles at the time and it was kind of nice not having to deal with the mainstream.

There was sort of a VHS vs DVD war, but it wasn't this bad from what I remember.

This Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD thing reminds me of a video game console war. Or something along the lines of "Lord of the Rings" vs. "Star Wars"

It's as if people are going to show up in costumes of the players and dual it out.

I have been seeing it everywhere online. Some of the forums are downright vicious on the subject. It's kind of surprising really. Full grown men in their 30's on one forum resorting to calling names such as "HD dildo" and "pudding muncher tree hugging blu ray pussy"

It's probably a good thing we didn't have the internet during the time of VHS vs. BETA.

Seriously the whole thing is so ridiculous. Almost like living some sort of distorted marijuana induced phantasmagoric nightmare.

I still can't believe there is so much passion over these formats. Either one will be an excellent HD video format so let the best one win. I can see people having a slight preference for one or the other with their slight differences, but I can't believe anyone can get fanatical over this stuff. The only problem that I have is someone investing in the losing one because it sucks to get on board for a format that gets abandoned, but I honestly see plenty of combo players available on the market a year or two from now so that probably isn't an issue either.

can you give us a link??
I have not heared of any next gen player so cheap ...