Um... every HD-DVD that's been out so far is better than its Blu-Ray counterpart. And they sell better.

Hmm....why is that?? Both of these are coming to HD-DVD and will probably have Dolby TruHD 5.1 and IME.

I'm still trying to figure it out. Seems like an obscure Chicken Little reference to me. 'cuz we all know that is the BD killer app that everyone is waiting for...

Wait that's right, Chicken Little is a bigger deal than Batman Begins.

The Wild is also the biggest movie of 2006. It's true, look it up.

I'm not sure about recordables. Both sides have been playing their cards close to their chests on this one, and the Toshiba recorder was... interesting. Apparently it doesn't record in a format recognisable by the current HD DVD players, which is somewhat troubling. I'm not sure if they launched it in the end. While the BD recorders haven't been heard from in some time.

BTW how does Talledega Nights compare to Anchorman?

Batman Begins - $371,853,783*
Chicken Little - $314,432,665*

Very little difference between them, though the Chicken flick doesn't interest me personally...

*Worldwide Gross from DVD Mojo

Again, this means nothing becasue of the "most frequent gamers" part. What does that mean exactly? The test group totally skews the results.

I will tell you one thing: This definitely gives me pause if thinking about buying a A1, and even 2nd gen HD-DVD hardware unless it is explicitly stated it will play TL.

I'm not sure why it would give you pause, but then, I don't mind swapping discs on long movies. Are there movies currently that would not fit on DL30? I think the main reason many won't fit on BD is because they use MPEG-2, correct?

Boxoffice gross doesn't always mean it translates to the same success on DVD. If it did then Titanic would be the biggest selling DVD (I'm not even sure it's in the top 20). A movie's success/failure at the boxoffice can depend a fair amount on whatelse is playing at that time.

I think Spartacus will be the longest movie in HD-DVD in Oct.

Also, isnt Harry Potter 2.5 hours? It will have TruHD 5.1 AND IME. So, it seems that a 2.5 hour movie can easily fit with those options.

Also, encoding technology will get better over time and space will probably be reduced.

I think easily Batman Begins is a bigger deal to early adopters than Chicken Little. Hands down. Undeniable.

Those animated movies do well due to families and kiddos. I think Batman Begins will sell HD-DVD players by itself where Chicken Little will not be a huge draw (on its own) for BD players.

Who wants to be stuck with a player that potentially won't play a disc?

This part of the article was interesting:
This means a few things to me. First, those PS3s better be on a very stable surface, and not be kostled while they are being used. Second, the idea of a portable player is complicated greatly by this potential to be damaged.

It will be interesting to see the "failure" rate (in quotes because if properly cared for, there should be no problems, but we know how people are) of the PS3.

Ebay is your friend. I always upgrade and sell my old players on ebay. I usually do pretty well on selling and make most of my money back since I shop for discounts/coupons. Im sure ill do that when a quality second gen hd-dvd comes out (as long as the upscaling of sd is as good).

Honestly, in this war, software/media is more important in the long run. I dont want to have to rebuy movies (like I would have to for MANY of the BD releases due to pic quality/special features had I taken the plunge)

It means gamers who play games most frequently.

Ah, but which way does it skew? Most people here are assuming that younger players play games much more frequently than older gamers. So if the survey sample was expanded from "most frequent gamers" to "all" gamers, the restults would skew even older.

Again, that research is done by an association that is pushing business for the video game industry.

There are way too many variables that go into it.

Is a 64 year old grandma who plays solitaire on the computer in the target market for the PS3? Probably according to this group she is.

That grandma is only in their market if she is buying it for her grandkids not for herself.

I do not know ANY people over the age of 35 who frequently play console games. They only play computer games. They have consoles, but they are for their kiddos. Logically, this makes sense to me over some marketing surveys.

It would matter less to me currently if there are no movies that really need TL45. If we are talking about something for extras, I really don't care if extras are on another disc.

I don't know...when we get to talking about TL45, it seems like about the same as talking about BD100. It's just too far out in the future to bother me at this point. Especially at $363 for the Toshiba player.

If there were a number of movies that needed TL45, it would be different.

I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has not purchased a player yet. If I had bought a player at launch a few months ago, and had enjoyed it from then till now until, I probably wouldn't care. But I am looking at getting a player of one format or the other probably around the new year, so the fact that the next generation may play TL discs would influence me to wait if that was the case. Those that have enjoyed their decks will definitely have gotten their money's worth by then.

It is rumored that TL could come next year. That's not too far off and it is different than the BD100s because BD 100 is in the BD spec. Let me make clear that I think that current hardware will play TL so all this may be a non-issue.

BD-100 is in the spec? Interesting.

The likelihood of me getting an HD-DVD drive for data storage is close to nil. If BD-50s work now, we may get BD-75s or BD-100s. I won't be getting one for at least a year anyway so I'm not terribly concerned. If HD-DVD came out with a triple layer burner and it was half the price, then I'd jump on it. But right now there's no advantage on the data side. HD- and BD drives are all the same price. Any problems either will have with HDMCP or movie playback are bound to get figured out. But if they are the same price, I see no advantage on the data side for HD-DVD.

But -- those two things are completely separate. I can see a world where consumer electronics are 80/20 HD/BR and data storage is 20/80 BR/HD. That wouldn't bother me.

You got me wondering so I went to check and this is what I found:

To me this can be read two ways. Either the media designs are "future proof" by be ing able to add additional layers, or the players AND the media are future proof.

Time will tell I guess.

I also agree completely that BD will probably find a home as a computer storage standard. I think the only way HD-DVD-R has any headway is if HD-DVD really takes off and the ability to play home-authored discs in players exists. There are rumors that the decks won't play burned discs. Again, time will tell.

I can't find if anything beyond BD50 is in the Blu-Ray spec. The BDA official site doesn't have much to say about the subject. We will all know soon enough, I assume, as the PS3 is likely to be the final say so on what is and is not in the spec.

I agree with your thoughts on the CE industry vs PC industry and how different the applications can be for these discs. I think SL Blu-Ray would be perfect for optical storage and a welcome upgrade from burning on dvds. PS3 games released on BD25 should be enough to drive down the costs of recordable discs.

The problem with DL Blu-Ray, or possibly TL Hd-dvd for that matter, is that with a PC burner the media may always be pretty expensive compared to single layer. Consider how much of a premium recordable DL-dvd is to this day. Now imagine how much more expensive those DL discs would be if the studios never switched over to using them for movies, which resulted in increased yields and lowered costs all around. That can very well be the case with DL and Blu-Ray if the studios stick to SL discs for the majority of their releases.

No, because the survey differentiates between console and PC gamers.

Thus she'd be covered under the category for console buyers, and lo, the ages skew higher for that.

Actually, anecdotal evidence is the least logical type of information to base conclusions on. Surveys try to be as random as possible to remove any possible bias or irregularities in the sample, to get as representative a sample of the overall population as possible. "People you know" is the least representative of the population as a whole, and is the most prone to bias or irregularities.

If you can find another survey that has different numbers, you can argue against the survey. Saying that it doesn't seem right to you isn't really a strong counter though. If people behaved exactly the way we thought people should behave, we wouldn't need surveys.

Excellent point.

Yeah, but how much resale value does a player have if it can't play all the discs of a particular format?

It'd be like those early DVD players that had problems player certain DVDs; nobody wanted to keep those, and certainly nobody wanted to buy those.

If current HD-DVD players either cannot play or cannot be upgraded to play TL HD-DVDs, then introducing them could cause quite a hiccup to HD-DVD's sales.

Yeah, but you also have to consider the cost of the media. Even though dual-layer DVDs have been out for a couple of years, they still aren't worth using because they're still too expensive compared to single-layer discs. Unless you have a specific need for DL (hint, hint), it's not worth spending $2 or $3 for a blank DL disc when you can get a SL disc for under 50 cents.

We don't know what the media will cost yet (that $50 BD shouldn't be an indicator of what the eventual, sane price will be), so until then, we can't really say which will be better for storage.