My thoughts exactly.

Okay, I'll clarify further. I chose HD DVD at first because there were more desirable titles available and BD got off to a bad start. There were rumors that things would happen, that certain studios would go neutral at CES this past year, but none of that happened. It was just the opposite: a bunch of titles were mentioned for release on BD while HD DVD kept mostly quiet. While many of those ended up getting delayed or cancelled later, at the time it was enough to convince me. (That's also when I stopped caring about sales figures.) BD started to get its act together, and it became known that the PS3 was in fact a really good BD player. Plus, as I said, I wanted a new game console anyway. So, then I got a PS3 and was able to buy movies on both formats.

I chose 'couldn't resist deals', but I have to agree, I'm a film dork, so love of movies is the true reason, but the deals were too damn good lately!

I was looking at an upconverting player for my regular DVDs, and the one I wanted was $90. While looking for a deal, I came upon the Wal-Mart early Nov $97 HD-A2 player deal, saw that it upconverted, and said fuck it. I bought 2, sold one for some profit to buy movies (I'm unemployed right now), and kept the other. I love it! The upconversion job on some of the standard discs is great, plus I can get the HD versions of newer films and faves...I'm happy.

Plus, I was able to sell my old Panny CP-72 (which was the 5 disc version of the legendary RP-82) for $120, and it was almost 5 years old...Basically, when it was all said and done, I got paid to get HD-DVD.

In the next few years, I'd like to pick up a combo BR/HD player, and jump into BR as well.

My old main DVD player died. To get a decent player with all the features I wanted (upscaling, optical output and some other things I don't remember anymore) seemed to be moving up into the $150 range, so I spent the extra $100 (at that time) to get an HD-DVD player with 5 free movies.

I can't believe your CP72 lasted that long. I loved my CP72 but it lasted less than 2 years. It died to the typical motor/bearing failure that the RP82 players tended to get and got replaced with a Zenith DVB318.

I'd love to have a disc-changer again. It was handy having a 5-disc player around.