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What are you talking about? 50 GB BD-R discs are out. What has yet to come out is a way to mass produce 50 GB discs for less than $48 per disc.

1080i and 1080p provide exactly the same resolution as far as movies go.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/08/14/hometheatermag-th ere-is-no-differnce-between-1080i-and-1080p-mo/

HD-DVD has a huge edge over BluRay right now because it is ready for market and is half the cost. Whether that will be enough to win the format war I don't know. But it might be. It sure would be good to have an early winner.

That amount of storage space for games would be nice to have, but really wont be utilized for a while, and only for certain types of games.

Actually, according to Microsoft (several times) the HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games, period, end of discussion. See reference material here and here and here, just to show a few examples.

Aside from that, I agree with your post. MS isn't doing this to promote a format as much as they're doing it to spur more sales of their console. $600 for an HD-DVD player is still a decent price at the moment, and if you consider that most people considering the add-on will already have the X360 at that point, it looks a lot more like $200 to them. Plus, it's a completely non-requisite component for the system -- as opposed to the PS3, where the BD-drive is so important to Sony that they've delayed the console launch TWICE because of it. I'm all for Sony taking as long as it takes to get it right, but there's a point where their 'top-of-the-line' console starts to look like a very, very expensive way for them to promote their new (and ultimately doomed, like UMD, betamax, and mini-disc) proprietary media format.

Not to cause an argument, but I've read different.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/05/08/ps3-games-not-108 0p/

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/05/11/e3-what-resolutio n-are-ps3-games-running/

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/707/707540p1.html

The IGN article reports Gran Turismo is the only game currently slated to run at 1080p, but the 2nd HD Beat article I linked claims Gran Turismo actually natively runs 720p, but was upscaled to 1080p at E3 and would also do so at the final release.
I'm not one to argue whether that can be considered REAL 1080p, but you do have to admit having every game announced save only ONE to only be running 720p after all of Sony's '1080p for EVERYONE!!' hooplah does seem to be alittle bit of a backtrack. Thats also not to say that the ps3 isn't CAPABLE of that resolution, or that later games will natively run at such res, it just looks like for now 1080p isn't as much of a barganing chip for Sony's camp as they make it out to be.

I dunno... I guess I'm sick of Sony's Hype/PR machine stirring the masses unjustly.

I dunno. Just my 2 cents.

Not to cause an argument, but I've read different.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/05/08/ps3-games-not-108 0p/

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/05/11/e3-what-resolutio n-are-ps3-games-running/

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/707/707540p1.html

The IGN article reports Gran Turismo is the only game currently slated to run at 1080p, but the 2nd HD Beat article I linked claims Gran Turismo actually natively runs 720p, but was upscaled to 1080p at E3 and would also do so at the final release.
I'm not one to argue whether that can be considered REAL 1080p, but you do have to admit having every game announced save only ONE to only be running 720p after all of Sony's '1080p for EVERYONE!!' hooplah does seem to be alittle bit of a backtrack. Thats also not to say that the ps3 isn't CAPABLE of that resolution, or that later games will natively run at such res, it just looks like for now 1080p isn't as much of a barganing chip for Sony's camp as they make it out to be.

I dunno... I guess I'm sick of Sony's Hype/PR machine stirring the masses unjustly.

I dunno. Just my 2 cents.

Look, I have bad karma already for making these kinds of posts, but geez, this is really really old news, like 3+ months. http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/03/15/moviebeam-review/ HDBeat reviewed it, and we've been talking about it on AVSforums since January or February. This wasn't "just announced".

Wrong again. The FCT flag, optionally used on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, is up to the content publisher to use. It seems most won't - and at least not Sony - according to themselves.

Btw, it's HDCP, not HDMI, you're talking about.

From everything I have seen, as it stands now
Displayport is compatible with No prior standard.

It does carry audio,and no royalties will be due
to anyone but the Big Deal is Big Business.It supports bidirectional "optional" encryption protection schemes. And No prior standard is supported.

Simply replace everything you own, from the content to the machine.
And... Your display will now have to approve of your content.
Another added level of complexity designed to make things not work, which will likely result in things that do not work.
This is called either Trusted or Protected.
Be very afraid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
"DisplayPort" Could Introduce Protected Displays"
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813963 ,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

DisplayPort: Because what we really needed was
  another connector
http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/05/03/displayport-becau se-what-we-really-needed-was-another-connector/

Since when? Since people like the RIAA managed to pay, trick or otherwise get the people in charge to pass moronic laws, such as those that make it illegal for us to attempt to crack protection systems put in place to take away fundamental rights such as making a backup of software you legally own.

Unfortunately, capitalism has it's ups and it's downs. The ups generally outweigh the downs, but, the downs definitely include greed, and the moment government steps in, capitalisms downs start growing larger. They've gotten the government on their side, so, now it's slowly moving towards where the customers have to beg. For an interesting read, go dig through some of the stuff that's happening with the new blue laser DVD formats, HDTV, and other similar new technologies. They are fighting over things like DRM and doing everything within their power to ensure we will get the priveledge of having to deal with a huge number of penalties ranging from inability to copy to actually getting decreased quality simply because they can't agree on interface standards and licenses. I've actually heard that we will be forced to switch to things like HDTV with no option to remain on plain old analog within ten years or so, and they are already promising to require DRMs and such even in that so you can't record and such. Here's an interesting article (a little old, but, still has the gist of it) you may wish to look at: http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/02/24/will-you-boycott- hd-with-mike/ The fact is, we can boycott all we want, but, people like my dad who just loves his HD football aren't going to give it up simply because it actually adds a protection to prevent copying or somesuch. Those people make up the majority, not us. I'm sorry, but, I'm afraid we're outnumbered here. The average joe doesn't understand about the ups and downs of DRM -- in fact, he doesn't know what DRM even stands for -- he just knows that best buy sold him an HDTV, he turned it on, and it worked, so he didn't take it back. The industry just needs enough of them and we can boycott all we like and they'll still eventually push things far enough that we have only two choices: don't buy anything at all and no longer watch TV/HD-DVDs, or, give up and let them have their way.

Actually, I would be terribly interested to know how it is they are managing to get some of these bills and such through. With people like the EFF trying to fight them, they shouldn't have gotten so much through. They've already killed off the very POINT of "fair use" for computer software, so I worry about just what the ultimate limits are. How much can they bribe or threaten through congress? Will we one day be just paying a Sony, MGM, and etc tax and get to watch something only once before the medium explodes and we have to buy a new one to watch again? Seems to be their idea of a utopia and they are fighting with all they have for it, but, the scary thing is, they are slowly gaining ground.

You have a good point - putting media onto the Tivo (ie DVDs) is something you're going to have a problem with. My point is that the tivo does quite a lot, quite well, with almost 0 config.

As for cablecard, the 1.0 implementation was pitiful. 2.0 will be slightly better, and OCAP shows promise. It's definitely not going away. And the good news for all of us is that cablecard tuner cards (as well as satellite cards for DirecTV) should ship some time this year. It's still a good move by sharp - Cable card in an expensive display is a dumb idea. You want sharp providing your PVR/PPV/guide software? There's gonna be a box plugged into it somewhere - put the cablecard in that.

http://www.opencable.com/ocap/
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/10/19/cable-cards-2-0-c oming-in-2006/

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/03/10/sony-pictures-blu -ray-titles-wont-down-res/

Sony says they aren't going to downsample any movies they have the rights to.

As far as cost goes, you can certainly get a cheaper HD system than the one presented in the article.

I'm not sure what Slashdot is doing posting this, but a couple months ago when it was news:

http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/09/27/the-next-hd-shd-4 k/

Also, you can get a 4k projector for your house RIGHT NOW.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/10/25/sonys-sxrd-4k-pro jector/

I'm not sure what Slashdot is doing posting this, but a couple months ago when it was news:

http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/09/27/the-next-hd-shd-4 k/

Also, you can get a 4k projector for your house RIGHT NOW.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/10/25/sonys-sxrd-4k-pro jector/