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.