My Best Buy has the HD DVD/BD section right in the front middle of the store behind the new release rack. Several people are usually looking and buying discs on both sides.

Was in my local BB tonight and went browsing their HD TVs and HD discs aisle.

I was the only one hopping between the shelves for a good part of 30mins. Consider, it was a TUE night and store did seem slow. They had HD DVD on one side, with Blu-Ray on the other. During my 20mins browsing, I noticed one person go to the Blu-ray side, pick up a movie, shrug, and put it down. They went to the regular DVD aisle to shop some, then left.

The customer never asked a salesguy about what it was...

No HD DVD setup, but they had the Sony and Samsung BD players hooked up to two tvs ofcourse. I asked the salesguy how come no HD DVD. He said "These are 1080p TVs and ppl want Blu-ray because it does 1080p". I was shocked to hear this. This is what they are training their reps to say, in both BB and CC!

You should have seen his face when I told him I have an HD DVD player and it outputs in 1080p! LOL. He said that can't be possible. I said Toshiba has the XA2 and next month, the A20. I left him very much confused, even more so, when I told him that both those players are or will be cheaper than their BD players in-store right now. Too funny...

Anyways, w/ BD being pushed and promoted like this, it's kind of hard for it not to end up being the winner. Reminds me very much of the left & right in our country's politics these days.

I am amazed at how uninformed the general consumer/retailer is regarding items they are purchasing/selling.

Ya know, I'm one of those people ready for these movies (I have a 50'' plasma and we watch a ton of flicks). But I really think this format "war" sucks and I'll continue to be one of those people ready to buy, but won't. I don't mean this in a boycott or angry sense, I just don't like two camps when SD-DVDs aren't like that. I do feel like I'm missing out a bit, though. I guess when HD players drop below $200 I might feel differently about choosing a side.

So, OP... I say go with Blu-Ray since the name sounds cooler! :)

This format war has been pretty simple for me. I bought the 360 add-on because it was cheaper. My TV is only 1080i anyway so HD-DVD on the XBox was a nice fit, and all 25 movies I have look fantastic. Now when Blu-Ray becomes $300ish i'll pick one up, and the other BD movies I want like Casino Royal and AVP. If over time one or the other fails, I will just sale what i've got of the loser format. By the time Ive sold all the SD DVDs and loser format DVDs, I will have a fair amount of cash to pickup the re-releases from the winner HD format. Dont tell me no one will buy the loser format stuff either because I know CD Exchange still trips over the 300 VHS tapes I sold them back in the day.

I did pick only one format, HD DVD. I may add Blu-Ray this year or next.

I was going to sit it out and wait until somebody won, but now that it's been a year, and there's no end to the war in sight, I am going Blu-Ray. Why? Catalog selection. I could live with watching Universal movies in SD. Plus I hate those combo disks HD-DVD is making.

If you can only buy one HD format, you are going to miss out on titles either way. The flip side to that coin is that if you buy both formats you lose the right to complain. -wink-

I do not think either format will die and I think adoption could grow from 1% to as much as 10% this year. It should still take a few years before HD sales hit 25% adoption.

Despite Sony's victory claims, they are going to have to get used to the competition. HD DVD has almost 60 releases announced for the next three months, they are lowering hardware prices, and they will add new hardware manufacturers.

I've got both (just got my Toshiba XE1 yesterday) and I'm still split. I love my combo HD-DVDs (really looking forword to Children of Men, but not that worrioed about The Matrix stuff) But I have been more pleased with the BD quality. And at the start I really wanted BD to fail.
The BD stuff looks really good, POTC and all that jazz. BUt like someone else has said, Universal has a hell of a back catalogue.

This link is a pretty good unbiased buyer's guide:
http://www.hd-world.net/Buyerguide.html

Isn't Kill Bill owned by Miramax? Or did it transfer over when the Weinsteins left?

I picked only one format, and that's Blu-ray. Sorry, but without Fox, Disney, and Sony, HD DVD can never win this war. I think it's inevitable that Universal will eventually support Blu-ray, at which point this whole thing will be over.

I picked up HD A2, since I needed an upconverting player anyways. The cheapest blue-ray player is 600 or so bucks and doesn't upconvert.

Miramax retains the right to the individual Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2, but The Weintein Company has the rights to the combined/extended Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

I have both....360 HD-DVD and a PS3. Although, I pretty much RENT my movies from Blockbuster.com, so I guess I don't really support much yet. I do own 4 HD-DVD's though, compared to my pack-in for Blu-Ray.

I do tend to like the Blu-Ray Exclusives better (Horror fan here).

Yet another reason for me to go dual format and get HD-DVD. With all the price drops announced recently it will be hard not to.