This isn’t a A/B comparison – I don’t currently have the ability to play either format. I’ve been stalling for a few reasons, but its been getting a lot more tempting to leap in on one, or the other, or both formats.
This posting was prompted by the Engadget post Gartner: Blu-ray to win in 2008, HD DVD price cuts are “useless resistance”. My friend Matt claimed last week that the war was won:
“Some might say that Warner Bros. pre-CES annoucement of dropping HD-DVD was the tipping point, but true believers will recognize that Matt’s January 24th purchase of a PS3 and several Blu-Ray titles as the historic event.” – Matt
There are some crazy prices on HD-DVD players now, Futureshop has the Toshiba HD-DVD A3 for $148.99. I’m almost kicking myself for picking up the Oppo 980 (should be at the post office waiting for me) – but the A3, while it is apparently a very good upconverting player – still is fairly slow at layer changes etc. If it didn’t look like the format war was winding down, the HD-DVD support would be a lot more tempting – but as it is, it would be a severely underused facility of the player.
It is my opinion that Sony has pretty much bet the company on Blu-ray. 2007 didn’t seem like a great year for Sony, and I do strongly suspect that things like the Warner CES announcement came along with some cash from Sony. Hopefully their well won’t run dry before the format debate is over.
I guess I’m still firmly in the ‘wait and see’ camp, let’s see how long I can stall – my prediction is that I’ll have one or both before the end of this year.
Sony has contents, lots of it. Sony entertainments include the ownership of two Hollywood movie studios, Columbia and TriStar. My guess is they will continue to be a major player in any DVD market. But I did own one of their betamax, so I too will “wait and see”.