We're talking about formats here - interoperability is the important thing here.
It's a loose analogy about competition. Competition is almost always a good thing, especially when the contest -- despite all of the rhetoric in the industry saying otherwise -- is really Toshiba versus Sony (sure, there are some other manufacturers for each, but to take Blu-ray for an example, one really was a chump if they bought a Samsung Blu-ray player, because it turns out that the only BR player that is credibly future proofed to adopt to the changing standard is the Playstation 3).
In this vacuum of intelligence, you state that there's still hope for HD-DVD. There's no chance it's coming back, not when HD-DVD has 30% of the market, and publishers care more about cost of production than satisfying the needs of a very small portion of people who own HD-DVD players.
No, HD-DVD's marketshare is more like 1% of the market. For that matter Blu-ray's marketshare is about 1% of the market. Which, I think, is the whole point: Casting this out as if it's the overall market is just ridiculous.
Not to mention that the PS3's marketshare of consoles is what...10%? Yeah, why would anyone bother supporting that -- it would be good for consumers and publishers if everyone just sucked it up and conceded that the Wii has won.
And it's pretty unfortunate for consumers that the war has played out not on merits, but on which studio got paid off to go to which camp (an activity that both sides have engaged in).
During the week following Warner's announcement -- a period in which the HD-DVD group went into hiding while they regrouped -- FUD went absolutely rampant. Eclipsing the damage of Warner's announcement were rumors from so-called insiders that Paramount and Universal were also jumping ship, along with the standard claims that the adult industry was going blu. If you do a news search on HD-DVD right now you'll continue to find the same FUD, blown into a life of its own by blogger referencing blogger referencing blogger, repeating the same disproven claim.
In this vacuum of information, there's no surprise that HD-DVD sales collapsed, and it isn't because of the loss of Warner's catalog.
Since then the outcome is much less certain, however. Toshiba hasn't just conceded (and they shouldn't -- just prior to Warner's announcement it was 50/50), but instead they've come out swinging, dropping the price of their units by half (obviously it has to be cheap to compete with a format that largely was acquired for "free" as an added value of a game system). This price puts a very capable HD-DVD player with ethernet, HDMI, optical audio, and so on, as cost competitive with a decent upscaling DVD player -- and the Toshiba unit is a very good upscaling player. Add the 7 or more free HD-DVD movies that'll work forever even if HD-DVD dies, and a catalog of 1000 or so HD-DVD movies already on the market, it's a hell of a deal. If someone could hack this baby to be a media head unit it would absolutely own.
Reports are that sales have been absolutely massive, and Toshiba's campaign has been a success. Warner since has extended their HD-DVD support by almost a month, and other very positive rumors have circulated about HD-DVD.
Don't write HD-DVD off quite yet.
As an aside, one thing that really pisses me off about this war are claims that the end of the format war would be good for consumers. This is as logical as saying that Windows and IE should be universal -- good for consumers. Worse, Blu-ray has so many consumer-unfriendly facets (cost, no combo discs, a standard that's still in flux, early adopters getting screwed, the nebulous DRM of BD+) that it winning can never be perceived as a consumer win. Yeah, I'm biased because I didn't choose a format to win based upon a game unit I happened to buy.
>I know the spade in my (unlocked / ungated) garden could be used to hit someone around the head and possibly even kill them
Analogies seldom make any headway in clarifying the argument, and this is no exception.
Though it's interesting that you mention that, as yes -- you do have significant civil liability regarding your property. If you leave a garden space lying about that a young child takes and hits another child, then you might want to get your lawyer's phone number out.
Make them bankrupt themselves purchasing bogus domains?
I doubt they're making any financial commitment "purchasing" these domains. They're simply putting in a database record, and then removing it within the 5-day grace period (thus removing any liability to any other registrars).
If Microsoft decided to abandon HD-DVD and go the blu-ray route today, they still wouldn't have anything to market for a year or more, which is a pretty huge window. Economically there's no way they could make it as inexpensive as Sony could.
Then there's the unpleasantry for Microsoft, such as the fact that blu-ray uses Java for its interactive layer.
So Microsoft has to build the hardware, build the interactive layer runtime, all after licensing Blu-ray and Java at a cost from their competitor.
Bluray does 1080p, and HD-DVD does 1080i, at least with the way things are set up right now.
Get educated.
Firstly, the difference between the two is completely irrelevant for movies (which is what we're talking about). I want 1080/24p, not the 1080/60p that the kids are giggling over.
Secondly, HD-DVD is the same 1080p as Blu-ray. Perhaps you mean specific players? There are 1080i and 1080p players for both formats.
Then the XBox 360 would have been late to market and expensive. I think MS had a lot more staked on the success of the XBox 360 than HD DVD.
Blu-ray has effectively won (which is a sad outcome in many, many ways). So if someone is choosing a game console today, what game console do you think they will pick?
This is a disaster for the XBOX360, and as much as Microsoft wants to pretend that they're on the sidelines as a uninterested spectator, this is going to dramatically undermine their platform.
While I'm sad that blu-ray won, now that I'm considering getting a player to complement my technically superior HD-DVD player I'm in the interesting position of possibly getting a PS3 simply because it's one of the least expensive Blu-ray players out there, and hey, maybe I'll play a game or two...
So a superior technology, pushed by both Apple and Sony over their technically inferior but cheaper technology, could win?
Blu-ray holds more per layer (though not necessarily more per disc). Only from that single perspective is it a "superior technology". Of course in practice that just meant that studios released blu-ray films in the antiquated MPEG2 format, using the extra space to push an obsolete codec.
In every other way it is inferior. Perhaps by Profile 3.0 Blu-ray will have some of the capabilities of the HD-DVD stack.
I bought my PS3 over an XBox. I am 29 years old, and a Sr. dev by profession
My blind rage indeed.
Fanboy. Blind rage. The PS3 fanatics really are digging into the bottom of the barrel.
In any case, you seem to suffer from a rather common logical fallacy. One that leads you to defensively strike out in ridiculous, unnecessary ways.
The next generation media war is being settled by a game console that is largely the domain of pimply-faced teens. Your fallacy is presuming that such a statement includes you, when in actuality that allows for quite a margin of PS3 users who are nothing of the sort.
This is just sad. Retarded. And sad. Last Christmas the sale of the PS3 wasn't all that high. This Christmas it was way too late to claim that Christmas gifts had anything to do with the uptake of Blu-Ray at all since Blu has been outselling HD DVD all year.
There isn't an analyst on the planet who would point to anything but the PS3 as the cause of Blu-ray's success. 10,000,000 PS3, versus something like 300,000 standalone blu-ray players.
standalone Blu players outsold HD DVD players
For a brief period blu-ray took the lead while Toshiba stock disappeared on retail shelves.
Argument by Paranoid Delusions
Yes, it's paranoid delusion to fear media conglomerates when they're in bed with a company (that itself is a media company as well), put their interests first. Complete delusion.
Or you're just a sheeple. I think that's more accurate.
What's this bullshit about having to buy all your media twice? Cos last time I checked, I could play my DVDs in my PS3/any other Blu Ray player out on the market. Fuck off.
Awesome! So you plan on buying only standard definition media for your high definition platform.
Versus the fantasy of a blu-ray fanboy? Sorry, my argument is based on fact, while yours is based upon selectivity cherry picking stats to back your ridiculous argument.
Why don't we talk about standalone player sales? How about standalone players in the final quarter of 2007?
Right...because blu-ray was being eviscerated...
It is interesting that you claim this, but you can not substantiate it.
Of course I can't substantiate it -- that tends to be the nature of these sorts of bordering on illegal schemes (and yes, the HD-DVD camp engaged in it as well. I'm not defending HD-DVD, even if I'm intelligent to realize that it's a much better value proposition for consumers).
Still, your argument would be more persuasive if you didn't say really weird things like "I pay tax on Big Macs, therefore it's a tax"
The comment was in reply to the odd claim that something can't be taxed unless it's mandatory.
when your argument doesn't really have anything to do with tax at all
It's a figure of speech and it's pretty clear that it isn't a literal statement. It's in a similar vein to "the Microsoft tax" AKA "the Windows tax". Of course those aren't literally taxes, but they are arguably additional costs passed on to the consumer.
Unlike taxes, buying Spiderman 3 is not obligatory, so I'm failing to see your point.
Buying a Big Mac isn't obligatory, but when I do I pay tax on it. It still is tax.
Blu-ray comes with a significant price premium -- for both technical and licensing reasons -- over HD-DVD. Add the value of combo discs that you can get for HD-DVD, but not Blu-ray, and the average household either has to upgrade wholesale at once (have fun getting a blu-ray player for the SUV), or buy all media twice.
Blu-ray is a much more expensive proposition for exactly the same end result.
I like the part where you complain about fanboyism, and then immediately start going into wild speculation about "divx-like lockdowns and timed rentals", then follow that up with complaints of "selective buyouts" that both sides were doing.
I'm not against blu-ray because I grabbed a flag and started waving it, declaring my allegiance. I'm against blu-ray because I think it amounts to a massive tax on consumers. I truly believe that HD-DVD was generally a better win for consumers.
That isn't fanboyism at all, and I didn't stumble upon the format.
And yes, blu-ray's adaptive, updateable encryption system is open ended on purpose. Blu-ray already has a pretty onerous system, so let's see what happens once HD-DVD is out of the way.
A well presented argument, however it's no more convincing than it was when it came from the Warner PR department.
One million standalone HD-DVD players were sold during 2007, and the pace was rapidly accelerating. HD-DVD media sales started rapidly eating into the blu-ray share (a share that is overwhelmingly comprised of PS3 owners, a group whose only investment in the technology was that it happened to be in their game machine). Sony's own CEO, a company that a year earlier was in a commanding lead, was declaring it a stalemate at this point because inertia and trends had HD-DVD moving to the forefront in 2008.
HD-DVD was galloping to dominance at a rapid pace.
Which is why all of the dated propaganda about the consumer "choosing" (meaning discovering that their game unit plays some strange new format called blu-ray) is just such ridiculous bullshit, and it's why Warner's "end move" is ridiculous in the context.
Warner was paid off with absolute certainty, and the number was substantial.
There are some 10-15 million rabid Sony hating Xbox/Microsoft fans in the US. They will support any 'not Sony format' with a fanatical commitment that is easily mistaken for broad consumer support.
You have got to be kidding.
Blu-ray is alive today only because a punch of pimply-faced teens got a PS3 for Christmas, and suddenly believed that they had to defend all things Sony, including the blu-ray format that they happened into by chance. The rabid, frothing pro-blu-ray hordes are a frightening sight to all, flooding the message boards with "YEAH! SUCKZORZ ON THAT PARAMOUNT!"
While Blu-ray has some technical advantages, its adoption is a massive loss for the average consumers.
Not only are users going to get fucked on the price of hardware (that is for those of us who don't want a media player in the form of game machine. When people actually intentionally buy a next generation media player, they overwhelmingly chose HD-DVD), but forget about combo discs on blu-ray. Yeah, you know that new movie -- guess you're buying it twice if you want it in both high def and able to run on the vehicle's DVD player and the old computer in the kids room. That's a part of the glorious scam of blu-ray.
Adaptive encryption...yeah, expect divx like lock-downs and timed rentals soon enough with blu-ray. It's commming....
Sony trojan horsed the PS3 into households, and then furthered their campaign by selective buyouts (I marvel that anyone believes that Warner wasn't paid off. Wait a couple of months kids, and the details will come out). Now they get to enjoy the lucre as consumers are screwed into buying hardware and software that is much more expensive than the technically equivalent, more standardized and more solidified competitor.
I suspect they know the format was doomed and didn't want any of their IP to get dragged down with it.
Microsoft has significant IP in HD-DVD, and there was no way they "knew" the format was doomed (indeed, trends for the last twelve months, with HD-DVD showing much more momentum than Blu-ray, showed quite the opposite).
Indeed, the market hasn't spoken at all, and the likely explanation for Warner's decision was some back office hand greasing.
Microsoft left HD-DVD out of the Xbox 360 purely for cost/profit reasons: Unlike Sony, they couldn't take a loss on a speculative next generation player simply to build a base for their home electronics division (which is exactly how Blu-ray won this war. Without the PS3, Blu-ray would have been stillborn).
many of your comments are exaggerations or just plain silly
Guilty as charged.
I'm not sure why you think combo discs would be cheaper than regular discs, as you imply above, but a combo disc costs about what you'd expect a double-sided HD-DVD to cost.
HD-DVD combo-discs use the same process and fundamental technologies on both sides, and were a proven capacity at the outset. Bluray combo discs were hypothetical until relatively recently, requiring a transparent bluray layer in a much more difficult, expensive arrangement.
HD-DVD has had slim-line drives for over a year now.
Here's the state of things-
-HD-DVD discs are more reliable, are more easily made as combo discs (meaning DVD and HD-DVD on the same disc, which is critical for households where they might want to play it in classic DVD drives as well).
-The HD-DVD standard has been much more mature than Bluray.
-HD-DVD has no region coding.
-HD-DVD is less DRM encrusted (Bluray has an "adaptive" DRM, which I guarantee will lead to a divx-like phone home scheme).
-HD-DVD drives are cheaper to make, owing to the red laser.
-HD-DVD media is cheaper to make, especially combo discs.
-HD-DVD is a creation of the DVD consortium.
-Production HD-DVD now holds more (51GB) than Bluray, although it's academic as not even a 4 hour top-quality VC1 movie needs that much space.
Bluray is yet another desperate attempt by Sony to own the market, and the only cheerleaders of Bluray are nerdly husbands trying to validate their purchase of a PS3. If Microsoft had included HD-DVD in the XBOX360, Bluray would have already been relegated to the dustbins of yet-another-failed-Sony-format.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a loose analogy about competition. Competition is almost always a good thing, especially when the contest -- despite all of the rhetoric in the industry saying otherwise -- is really Toshiba versus Sony (sure, there are some other manufacturers for each, but to take Blu-ray for an example, one really was a chump if they bought a Samsung Blu-ray player, because it turns out that the only BR player that is credibly future proofed to adopt to the changing standard is the Playstation 3).
In this vacuum of intelligence, you state that there's still hope for HD-DVD. There's no chance it's coming back, not when HD-DVD has 30% of the market, and publishers care more about cost of production than satisfying the needs of a very small portion of people who own HD-DVD players.
No, HD-DVD's marketshare is more like 1% of the market. For that matter Blu-ray's marketshare is about 1% of the market. Which, I think, is the whole point: Casting this out as if it's the overall market is just ridiculous.
Not to mention that the PS3's marketshare of consoles is what...10%? Yeah, why would anyone bother supporting that -- it would be good for consumers and publishers if everyone just sucked it up and conceded that the Wii has won.
And it's pretty unfortunate for consumers that the war has played out not on merits, but on which studio got paid off to go to which camp (an activity that both sides have engaged in).
During the week following Warner's announcement -- a period in which the HD-DVD group went into hiding while they regrouped -- FUD went absolutely rampant. Eclipsing the damage of Warner's announcement were rumors from so-called insiders that Paramount and Universal were also jumping ship, along with the standard claims that the adult industry was going blu. If you do a news search on HD-DVD right now you'll continue to find the same FUD, blown into a life of its own by blogger referencing blogger referencing blogger, repeating the same disproven claim.
In this vacuum of information, there's no surprise that HD-DVD sales collapsed, and it isn't because of the loss of Warner's catalog.
Since then the outcome is much less certain, however. Toshiba hasn't just conceded (and they shouldn't -- just prior to Warner's announcement it was 50/50), but instead they've come out swinging, dropping the price of their units by half (obviously it has to be cheap to compete with a format that largely was acquired for "free" as an added value of a game system). This price puts a very capable HD-DVD player with ethernet, HDMI, optical audio, and so on, as cost competitive with a decent upscaling DVD player -- and the Toshiba unit is a very good upscaling player. Add the 7 or more free HD-DVD movies that'll work forever even if HD-DVD dies, and a catalog of 1000 or so HD-DVD movies already on the market, it's a hell of a deal. If someone could hack this baby to be a media head unit it would absolutely own.
Reports are that sales have been absolutely massive, and Toshiba's campaign has been a success. Warner since has extended their HD-DVD support by almost a month, and other very positive rumors have circulated about HD-DVD.
Don't write HD-DVD off quite yet.
As an aside, one thing that really pisses me off about this war are claims that the end of the format war would be good for consumers. This is as logical as saying that Windows and IE should be universal -- good for consumers. Worse, Blu-ray has so many consumer-unfriendly facets (cost, no combo discs, a standard that's still in flux, early adopters getting screwed, the nebulous DRM of BD+) that it winning can never be perceived as a consumer win. Yeah, I'm biased because I didn't choose a format to win based upon a game unit I happened to buy.
I happened to see the comic pretty much the minute it was posted (up late working), and curiosity had me searching on the various terms.
Not only did the search counts differ dramatically, even the relative ranking between the items differed.
It appears to have been a humor piece with intentionally bogus numbers, not a statistical summary of danger reporting online.
>I know the spade in my (unlocked / ungated) garden could be used to hit someone around the head and possibly even kill them
Analogies seldom make any headway in clarifying the argument, and this is no exception.
Though it's interesting that you mention that, as yes -- you do have significant civil liability regarding your property. If you leave a garden space lying about that a young child takes and hits another child, then you might want to get your lawyer's phone number out.
No, it's an open invitation for there to be gaming because it's a game.
I doubt they're making any financial commitment "purchasing" these domains. They're simply putting in a database record, and then removing it within the 5-day grace period (thus removing any liability to any other registrars).
If Microsoft decided to abandon HD-DVD and go the blu-ray route today, they still wouldn't have anything to market for a year or more, which is a pretty huge window. Economically there's no way they could make it as inexpensive as Sony could.
Then there's the unpleasantry for Microsoft, such as the fact that blu-ray uses Java for its interactive layer.
So Microsoft has to build the hardware, build the interactive layer runtime, all after licensing Blu-ray and Java at a cost from their competitor.
This is all bad for Microsoft.
Get educated.
Firstly, the difference between the two is completely irrelevant for movies (which is what we're talking about). I want 1080/24p, not the 1080/60p that the kids are giggling over.
Secondly, HD-DVD is the same 1080p as Blu-ray. Perhaps you mean specific players? There are 1080i and 1080p players for both formats.
Blu-ray has effectively won (which is a sad outcome in many, many ways). So if someone is choosing a game console today, what game console do you think they will pick?
This is a disaster for the XBOX360, and as much as Microsoft wants to pretend that they're on the sidelines as a uninterested spectator, this is going to dramatically undermine their platform.
While I'm sad that blu-ray won, now that I'm considering getting a player to complement my technically superior HD-DVD player I'm in the interesting position of possibly getting a PS3 simply because it's one of the least expensive Blu-ray players out there, and hey, maybe I'll play a game or two...
Blu-ray holds more per layer (though not necessarily more per disc). Only from that single perspective is it a "superior technology". Of course in practice that just meant that studios released blu-ray films in the antiquated MPEG2 format, using the extra space to push an obsolete codec.
In every other way it is inferior. Perhaps by Profile 3.0 Blu-ray will have some of the capabilities of the HD-DVD stack.
My blind rage indeed.
Fanboy. Blind rage. The PS3 fanatics really are digging into the bottom of the barrel.
In any case, you seem to suffer from a rather common logical fallacy. One that leads you to defensively strike out in ridiculous, unnecessary ways.
The next generation media war is being settled by a game console that is largely the domain of pimply-faced teens. Your fallacy is presuming that such a statement includes you, when in actuality that allows for quite a margin of PS3 users who are nothing of the sort.
There isn't an analyst on the planet who would point to anything but the PS3 as the cause of Blu-ray's success. 10,000,000 PS3, versus something like 300,000 standalone blu-ray players.
For a brief period blu-ray took the lead while Toshiba stock disappeared on retail shelves.
Yes, it's paranoid delusion to fear media conglomerates when they're in bed with a company (that itself is a media company as well), put their interests first. Complete delusion.
Or you're just a sheeple. I think that's more accurate.
Awesome! So you plan on buying only standard definition media for your high definition platform.
Good choice.
Versus the fantasy of a blu-ray fanboy? Sorry, my argument is based on fact, while yours is based upon selectivity cherry picking stats to back your ridiculous argument.
Why don't we talk about standalone player sales? How about standalone players in the final quarter of 2007?
Right...because blu-ray was being eviscerated...
Of course I can't substantiate it -- that tends to be the nature of these sorts of bordering on illegal schemes (and yes, the HD-DVD camp engaged in it as well. I'm not defending HD-DVD, even if I'm intelligent to realize that it's a much better value proposition for consumers).
The comment was in reply to the odd claim that something can't be taxed unless it's mandatory.
It's a figure of speech and it's pretty clear that it isn't a literal statement. It's in a similar vein to "the Microsoft tax" AKA "the Windows tax". Of course those aren't literally taxes, but they are arguably additional costs passed on to the consumer.
Buying a Big Mac isn't obligatory, but when I do I pay tax on it. It still is tax.
Blu-ray comes with a significant price premium -- for both technical and licensing reasons -- over HD-DVD. Add the value of combo discs that you can get for HD-DVD, but not Blu-ray, and the average household either has to upgrade wholesale at once (have fun getting a blu-ray player for the SUV), or buy all media twice.
Blu-ray is a much more expensive proposition for exactly the same end result.
I'm not against blu-ray because I grabbed a flag and started waving it, declaring my allegiance. I'm against blu-ray because I think it amounts to a massive tax on consumers. I truly believe that HD-DVD was generally a better win for consumers.
That isn't fanboyism at all, and I didn't stumble upon the format.
And yes, blu-ray's adaptive, updateable encryption system is open ended on purpose. Blu-ray already has a pretty onerous system, so let's see what happens once HD-DVD is out of the way.
A well presented argument, however it's no more convincing than it was when it came from the Warner PR department.
One million standalone HD-DVD players were sold during 2007, and the pace was rapidly accelerating. HD-DVD media sales started rapidly eating into the blu-ray share (a share that is overwhelmingly comprised of PS3 owners, a group whose only investment in the technology was that it happened to be in their game machine). Sony's own CEO, a company that a year earlier was in a commanding lead, was declaring it a stalemate at this point because inertia and trends had HD-DVD moving to the forefront in 2008.
HD-DVD was galloping to dominance at a rapid pace.
Which is why all of the dated propaganda about the consumer "choosing" (meaning discovering that their game unit plays some strange new format called blu-ray) is just such ridiculous bullshit, and it's why Warner's "end move" is ridiculous in the context.
Warner was paid off with absolute certainty, and the number was substantial.
You have got to be kidding.
Blu-ray is alive today only because a punch of pimply-faced teens got a PS3 for Christmas, and suddenly believed that they had to defend all things Sony, including the blu-ray format that they happened into by chance. The rabid, frothing pro-blu-ray hordes are a frightening sight to all, flooding the message boards with "YEAH! SUCKZORZ ON THAT PARAMOUNT!"
While Blu-ray has some technical advantages, its adoption is a massive loss for the average consumers.
Not only are users going to get fucked on the price of hardware (that is for those of us who don't want a media player in the form of game machine. When people actually intentionally buy a next generation media player, they overwhelmingly chose HD-DVD), but forget about combo discs on blu-ray. Yeah, you know that new movie -- guess you're buying it twice if you want it in both high def and able to run on the vehicle's DVD player and the old computer in the kids room. That's a part of the glorious scam of blu-ray.
Adaptive encryption...yeah, expect divx like lock-downs and timed rentals soon enough with blu-ray. It's commming....
Sony trojan horsed the PS3 into households, and then furthered their campaign by selective buyouts (I marvel that anyone believes that Warner wasn't paid off. Wait a couple of months kids, and the details will come out). Now they get to enjoy the lucre as consumers are screwed into buying hardware and software that is much more expensive than the technically equivalent, more standardized and more solidified competitor.
Microsoft has significant IP in HD-DVD, and there was no way they "knew" the format was doomed (indeed, trends for the last twelve months, with HD-DVD showing much more momentum than Blu-ray, showed quite the opposite).
Indeed, the market hasn't spoken at all, and the likely explanation for Warner's decision was some back office hand greasing.
Microsoft left HD-DVD out of the Xbox 360 purely for cost/profit reasons: Unlike Sony, they couldn't take a loss on a speculative next generation player simply to build a base for their home electronics division (which is exactly how Blu-ray won this war. Without the PS3, Blu-ray would have been stillborn).
Warner's decision, and the inevitable outcome of it, is effectively a multi-billion dollar tax on the entire home electronics industry.
But Warner got their greasing, and every consumer is going to pay for it.
HD-DVD was created by the DVD consortium as the next generation of DVD. It is DVDv2. It absolutely relegates DVD to a "classic" status.
Guilty as charged.
The post was an obviously intentional attempt to cheerlead HD-DVD. I wasn't looking to provide a balanced summary.
HD-DVD has had slim-line drives for over a year now.
Here's the state of things-
-HD-DVD discs are more reliable, are more easily made as combo discs (meaning DVD and HD-DVD on the same disc, which is critical for households where they might want to play it in classic DVD drives as well).
-The HD-DVD standard has been much more mature than Bluray.
-HD-DVD has no region coding.
-HD-DVD is less DRM encrusted (Bluray has an "adaptive" DRM, which I guarantee will lead to a divx-like phone home scheme).
-HD-DVD drives are cheaper to make, owing to the red laser.
-HD-DVD media is cheaper to make, especially combo discs.
-HD-DVD is a creation of the DVD consortium.
-Production HD-DVD now holds more (51GB) than Bluray, although it's academic as not even a 4 hour top-quality VC1 movie needs that much space.
Bluray is yet another desperate attempt by Sony to own the market, and the only cheerleaders of Bluray are nerdly husbands trying to validate their purchase of a PS3. If Microsoft had included HD-DVD in the XBOX360, Bluray would have already been relegated to the dustbins of yet-another-failed-Sony-format.