Sony new Blu-ray player for $499.

[Groundbeef]

Blu-Ray is picking up steam, and selling more units right now, but I think in terms of net units, they are pretty close.

In all honesty though, its a little early in the war to be picking a winner. I think its something like less than 2% of US households have HD-DVD (either format),

[kexodusc]

Blu-Ray is picking up steam, and selling more units right now, but I think in terms of net units, they are pretty close.

In all honesty though, its a little early in the war to be picking a winner. I think its something like less than 2% of US households have HD-DVD (either format),

I heard a brief commentary on some Tech show last night that made a point about picking a winner. As long as the Studio support remains the same, that is BluRay enjoys a wider scope of Hollywood support than HD-DVD, and the longer things go without HD-DVD building an insurmountable lead in the format war, the more likely it will be that BluRay wins. It's not enough for HD-DVD to be close or 50/50.

The point they were making was the pricing trends. Eventually, and perhaps in the near future, the gap between BluRay players and HD-DVD players will shrink to a point of consumer indifference. They put up prices around of $150 - $250 where that would happen but I don't know if that was just for show or they were predicting something. It spoke of gaming consoles, portable music formats, and computer stuff as examples.. If BluRay has more availbale new releases just by virtue of Studio support, the consumer is not likely to see enough of a price advantage to go with HD-DVD. The future promise meaning more than the back-catalog in the home-movie biz.

On the flip-side, if HD-DVD's exlusive studio(s) can crank out some huge blockbuster films for an extended period of time, or land something like Star Wars or LOTR exclusively it could build that lead.

The other thing they mentioned was like Presidential elections, a winner is usually determined very earlier, so 2% or 3% market penetration might be all that's needed.

I never really thought of it like that before, but the points were very valid. Right now could be the determining stage of things, despite everyone thinking it's very early on and not much happening.
At any rate, prices have dropped quite a bit in just 1 year, I have hopes that by next summer it'll be worth my time...though the schedule of upcoming releases isn't exactly inspiring.