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How about this momentum?

Sorry, but there is actually more support for HD DVD from the industry.

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

Weird, slashdot ate half my post on submission. Here's the whole thing, in its entirety:

Lots of FUD floating around this response thread. I happen to own both a PS3 and an XBox 360 with HD-DVD add-on, along with a television that does them both justice. Here's some facts:

1. The difference in picture and sound quality between HD-DVD / Blu-Ray and DVD is roughly the same as the jump in quality from VHS/LD to DVD. I've run numerous side-by-side comparison tests using the King Kong DVD & HD-DVD, as well as older films like Casablanca and Blazing Saddles. Much depends on the master & source material, but the difference is undeniable.

Now, that might not be enough to save either format. Most people didn't buy DVD for the increased quality, they bought it for the convenience of random access, and the decreased physical size / increased durability of the media vs. VHS tapes. HD-DVD / Blu-Ray don't offer any of these increases over the standard DVD.

2. The formats are almost identical in many key areas. Both play back the same video codecs (MPEG2, VC1, H.264), so when it comes down to it the films available on both formats are often identical. It all comes down to how the source material was mastered. Early blu-ray releases (5th Element) took a lot of knocks because the films are still mastered in the older MPEG2 format. Most newer films are encoded in the nicer Microsoft VC-1 standard, and look absolutely stunning.

3. The Playstation 3 absolutely does 1080p playback for blu-ray movies, when equipped with an HDMI cable. (Get a quality one for less than $10 at monoprice.com.) The XBox 360 absolutely does 1080p playback over component or VGA. Most HDTV's don't support 1080p over component or VGA (even my 2006 model Sony doesn't). Sadly, since the HDMI folks demand that all HDMI connectors be HDMI-only, and they disallow meta-connectors like the one on the 360, it seems unlikely that there will ever be an XBox 360 HDMI connector.

4. Some older HDTV's only do 1080i or 480p, and won't process signals in 720p up to 1080i. The hoohah is because the Playstation 3 also won't process 720p signals up to 1080i, but instead will downprocess these signals to 480p. Sony's already stated that they're working on a fix for this that will be pushed down via mandatory firmware update in the near future.

5. The newer audio formats, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, are decoded at the player and then sent to the receiver for playback. The lack of analog outputs means that these decoded formats can't be sent from a ps3 or a 360 to an older receiver. With a newer receiver, the PS3 can send these audio formats out via HDMI. The lack of HDMI outputs from the 360 means that these decoded formats can't be sent out from that system at all. That's too bad, because the difference in sound quality is pretty nice, and a definite upgrade over existing DTS / Dolby Digital. However, the 360 does downconvert these new signals to the highest bitrate of Dolby Digital possible (640K). There's an improvement over the sound quality of a DVD here, but not a big enough one you'd notice without listening to A/B comparisons.

6. The 360 HD-DVD drive has nothing to do with gaming. It's for movie playback only. It's also a terrific value. For $200 ($160 with a sneaky coupon last month), you get a $35 remote, a $35 movie, and an external USB2 drive that's recognized by both macs and PCs as well as an XBox 360. This thing has been flying off the shelves since it was released. Since the major argument against using a game console as your primary playback device is that you're putting undue wear on the system's drive, this means that I can now use the 360 as my primary DVD / HD-DVD playback device. That's great, because the 360 is a fantastic DVD player.

7. The formats are far from stillborn. Around 100 titles have been released for each format in the first year. Amazon sales data is tracked at http://www.thedvdwars.com/inde

The PS3 does not even have all advantages than you mention.

Final fantasy is out for the Xbox360 and there is an HD-DVD player out for the 360 as well. According to this link, HD-DVD has more titles, higher sales, and better titles than Blu-Ray titles but its still too early to tell which of the two formats, if either, will dominate.

Current numbers for Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD sales are available here.

I have no idea which of the two will survive (or if either will). It will probably be Blu-ray since I bought the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 this past weekend. I have a Panasonic 50" plasma (not 1080p, it's scaling to 720p/768p) but HD-DVD movies still look MUCH better than standard DVD. If it does die out, at least it was only $200. I'll enjoy Netflix HD-DVD rentals and a few purchases in the meantime.

I've been doing some research the last few days. My understanding of the history is that HD-DVD was released first. Blu-ray (commonly referred to as 'BD' which is short for Blu-ray disc I suppose) has more storage capacity and everyone expected the picture quality to be better. But that didn't happen. The initial BD releases were very disappointing and many people felt that HD-DVD looked better. New releases are apparently equal in picture quality. I think a lot of this has to do with the available drives as well as the mastering process. HD-DVD jumped out to a pretty big lead (not that either has sold a lot) but with the PS3 coming out tomorrow, there will be a lot more Blu-ray owners.

I'm curious to know how many 360 HD-DVD drives have already been sold and how it will continue to sell.

"They can, in theory, offer better sound, but only if you have a system capable of the new formats (and I've yet to see a compatible receiver) and only if the disc has it and many don't since Dolby Digital and DTS are the formats that are actually used in theatres."

This is not true. I can't speak for Blu-Ray (because I don't have one), but I do have an HD-DVD player and love it. All HD-DVDs have Dolby Digital+ which is better than regular DD. In addition, many HD-DVDs have "TrueHD" audio which is significantly better than DD.

Since the decoding is done in the player (not the receiver), all you need is HDMI 1.1 port to get the audio (it's sent via a PCM stream to the receiver, where extra processing is done for speaker distances, etc). In addition, if you don't have HDMI you can do the same thing with the analog outputs on the player - connect them to the analog inputs on your receiver and the same thing happens. The low end 2nd gen HD-DVD player will not have analog outputs, so if you want the cheap HD-DVD player with analog out, you need to buy it now.

The audio improvements are very good, but probably only if you have a decent setup (ie: "Hoome theater in a box" probably won't notice much of a difference).

I don't think HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will go the way of DVD-A/SACD like a lot of people predict. The sales of this new format completely dwarf what the audio format was selling (well, maybe not Blu-Ray...) http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

The way I look at it, I can get a player for $350 that makes my current DVDs look better than a normal DVD player and lets me buy new HD-DVDs. I don't need to replace my extensive collection with HD-DVDs unless I want to, and Netflix offers most/all HD-DVDs so I can rent 'em instead of buying if I want. Seems like a no brainer to me, but YMMV.

HD DVD discs are outselling Blu-Ray discs by a large margin, at least at Amazon.

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm

> producing an image that was not enough better
> than a DVD to be obvious to everyone?

That's because most Blu-ray movies aren't that much better than standard DVD. HD-DVD, on the other hand, has a consistently better picture (due to a better codec and more space - 30G vs 25G, although there's now one 50G BD disk available that has average PQ as well :) ).

To answer your HD-DVD question, it doesn't play them. There's no dual players (yet?), and Sony wouldn't produce something that plays the rival format anyway. It appears that they're willing to bet the entire company on PS3/BD. How the mighty have fallen.

http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm