This is second hand info since I have not seen this for myself yet, I was talking to a local high end dealer about which HD disc format the higher end manufacturers are leaning toward and none they carry have jumped on either yet. They do have a distributor and they brought in one of the available HD-DVD players to check out. What he told me was that the HD-DVD was some what brighter but as far as color and over all picture quality that a $1k Arcam DVD player was better than the HD-DVD player. The HD-DVD was around the same retail price and he was upset because he didn't know how he was going to off load the HD-DVD.

If this proves to hold true, I see HD-DVD and BRD going the way of the SACD and DVD-A. Lot's of promotion, not really taking off to the masses and eventually being just that a nitch or novelty that some have and swear by, where others could care less and not see the value.

I think it sucks that both force you to use HDMI to get the HD signal. I personally feel this is an inadequate and under developed mode of passing the signals. Maybe with the HD they will make it do what they claim.