I still don't like how the cases have changed size. What a worthless decision, and it looks horrible when lined up with DVDs and videogames. No thanks.

"In any case, Format Wars are bad for consumers. Yuck."

Not really. Look at it this way, if there was 1 format that won, the players would still be $1000. The format war just enabling competition. Competition is good!!!

As a Blu-Ray adopter (a nice PS3 byproduct) this is annoying, but could be worse (the deal doesn't include Spielberg films).

The longer this goes on, the only "winner" is looking like digital download services (which might be fine for some, but I want a physical product for my money).

The real 'format war' is the DRM atrocity being inflicted on consumers, no matter the media type they choose.

A lot of people have bought 'HD ready' peripherals only to find that the $1200 or $3500 they spent on their shiny new whatever didn't actually buy them a display device that is ALLOWED to display HD video. It's ridiculous.

"Total irrelevancy"? As a Netflix subscriber, I wish this was true, but Blockbuster's online service has been gaining steadily and is considered to be a better deal than Netflix in some circles.

hooray for $600 dvd players. This is dumb, but its funny to see minidisk 2.0 all over again. Maybe the 3rd time willbe the charm for sony.

@InThrees:

Schadenfreude is the word that comes to my mind.

Caveat Emptor indeed.

It's really hard to look at the "sales figures" because Sony LOVES to count the "get 10 free bluray discs when you buy a PS3 or bluray player!" discs as "sales".

The long story short is this: Whoever gets the players down to $99.99 first will win. Right now, HD-DVD is a lot closer to that than Bluray. Not to mention, Sony's little issue with parts that explode into flame due to crappy quality control...

As an HD-DVD owner (xbox360 add on), I hope that HD comes out on top. Everything I read on the ebays says Blu-ray is beating HD, but according to a classmate from Portugal, HD is by far the most popular format over there.

So maybe this format war isn't going anywhere...

I recently went to blockbuster to look for a job. There was nobody there. I never see any cars in the parking lot. They're all next door at Starbucks.

In any case, I don't watch much movies, I'll watch it when it comes on cable, or I'll have seen it when it was in theaters.

@dbeahn: The long story short is this: Whoever gets the players down to $99.99 first will win.

Maybe...as someone who witnessed firsthand being on the receiving end of the Beta/VHS fiasco, I can say that you could GIVE me one of these players but I still won't sink a penny into it until I know it's not going to vanish out from under me.

82300SD
"Not really. Look at it this way, if there was 1 format that won, the players would still be $1000. The format war just enabling competition. Competition is good!!!"

Not really. DVD's got cheep very quickly and they had no competition. Laserdisks and VHS were already old hat by the time DVD came out.

Competition at this point is keeping film prices. No one can commit full bore to production.

@Pelagius: What circles are you talking about? Insane asylums? Alzheimer's groups? Blockbuster for President association?

That seems to be the only way that someone could come up with that assumption.

@InThrees:
Right now neither format is using the image constraint token meaning that every device can display full hd content.

@hustler:
You do know that Sony implemented the 3.5" floppy, the CD and the DVD?

They are responsible for some of the most and least adopted formats.

If you consider Sony's history of format wars;
Betamax versus VHSs
Minidisc versus CDs
Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD

Sony doesn't have a strong track record for winning format wars (despite the fact that their formats are superior to the ones that win out.)

I'm not choosing anything until I see either a final format, or better multi-format support in the hardware.

@dbeahn:
Neither side HD-DVD or Bluray has been counting free disks as sales.

Had that been going on Sony would be millions ahead due to the give away of Blu-rays with the PS3.

The get 5 free HD-DVD's also haven't counted.

@DashTheHand:

The block buster deal is actually pretty awesome. The biggest problem with net flicks is that you need to wait a week to see what you want.

The ability to pick a movie that hits your fancy for a particular Saturday night is really a great thing.

I wouldn't have paid only 150 for a 1080p hd dvd player if it wasn't for a format war. in the end it won't matter with the dual players, so go ahead and buy whatever you want. If I get 2 years of use out of my hd dvd player i'll be happy before I move onto the dual players. both have interesting features and the hd picture is absolutely amazing. if blu ray was out all alone sony would ahve been raping us with 1500 dollar players that would not have gone down in price for years and movies that stayed at msrp.

blu-ray is over the top. It's too expensive for right now, plus it's pointless, who needs that much space for a movie?? for a pc maybe

@enm4r: They did? Anyone have a pic of the new cases next to an old one? I didn't know this.

I want to see Cars in hi-def (especially the big races) but until they can stop fighting and agree on a format, I'll wait.

Can't they see that if they'd agree on a common solution, they'd ALL earn money? But no, they're no better than people arguing on the Internet... flinging childish insults and seem unable to compromise like grownups.

I'm not interested in either format because I don't want to spend an extra $5-$10 per movie.

From my experience working at an electronics retailer, most people either can't discern or don't care about the jump in image quality from 'regular TV' (or DVD) to HD.

DVD overtook VHS because there were a few other benefits besides improved picture quality; instant scene access, no more rewinding, extra content, multiple languages, surround sound and so forth.

The reasons to jump from DVD to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray aren't as compelling, and most people don't see the value in doing so.

Paid to drop blu-ray... doesn't that qualify as bribery?

One good thing about the format wars, is thanks to them, Michael Bay won't be directing Transformers 2.

maybe by "paid" they just mean...they will "save" $150 million.

that was their excuse for dropping blu-ray was the cost savings.

@randomizer9: From my experience working at an electronics retailer, most people either can't discern or don't care about the jump in image quality from 'regular TV' (or DVD) to HD.

I think you mean they're too confused, and don't realize how much better HD programming is. You don't notice the difference, until you have it in your home and see it for yourself.

@B: Michael Bay won't but someone else probably will.

I agree with Randomizer. Aside from some videophiles wanting the latest tech, most customers are going to wonder why they spent an extra $10 on HDVD. Standard def looks just fine. I watch them on a 70" screen and love it. On most TV sets people won't notice any difference. At least not as much of a difference to justify buying a new player and replacing their DVD collections.

Thanks to DRM, they have made it impossible to convert your DVDs to a new disc format. So if one of these new formats goes mainstream and cuts regular DVDs out of the market, you'll have a pretty useless collection.

Until they come out with something revolutionary, I don't see any point in following this bandwagon.

There should be no argument with HD-DVD and BluRay.

-HD-DVDs are cheaper
-HD-DVD players are cheaper
-There was a DVD forum in 2003 which selected HD-DVD as the next gen format. The point of the forum was to prevent a format war. (Sony ignored the forum and never submitted BluRay)
-HD-DVDs can be manufactured with cheap modifications to existing DVD equipment.

Anyone who would rather waste their money on BluRay is crazy.

@Buran: My work filters most of the websites that I'm searching for with pictures to do "videogame/electronics" but I think this should work:

[www.kotaku.com]

I think Blu-ray is getting the edge because of the catchy name. I mean, how many formats are out there with the long abbreviations that regular consumers don't really understand? Blu-ray has a better sound to it, and I bet that's why it's more successful.

Apple needs to get in on this. They need to make a Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and DVD player that is half the size of any player out there and 3 times the cost. They could then also incorporate Frontrow software into it so you could stream iTunes media too.

They'll make billions!

@enm4r: Huh, weird, but nothing my particular DVD racks can't handle.

@Asvetic:

You don't notice the difference, until you have it in your home and see it for yourself.

Not much of a sales pitch when you're talking about a couple thousand dollars' worth of equipment.

@ry81984: If all you care about is what's cheaper, you are an example about why so many things are crap these days. If you want quality, pay for it -- and don't look at "it costs less" as the sole reason to go with something.

I don't know which is technically superior. I don't own a hi-def DVD player even though I have a hi-def TV (the HDMI port is connected to a TiVo Series 3 instead). But I know that I'm not going to say "buy this because it's cheaper".

That gets us things like toy jeeps covered in lead paint.

@C2D: Some people are willing to pay for quality.

Some people are willing to point and laugh at those people.

And some people wonder why we get lead-covered toys.

@beyond: I think the new players are backward compatible.

And just look how hard it is to replace the CD -- it's too well-entrenched.

@ry81984:
I haven't paid more than 24.99 + tax for a bluray disk.

Sony also did it's due diligence in getting a wide assortment of hardware makers and content providers on board with BluRay. It isn't a Sony only format.
Thats why only 1 company makes HD-dvd players while many make Bluray players.

And no people who would 'waste money' on bluray players aren't crazy. This whole damn thing is crazy.

I'll keep buying the movies I want in bluray and wait out the format war for the ones I can't.
I have free bluray player in my PS3 so it's a non-risk item. I'm not so sure I'd spend my cash on a standalone player that only plays movie disks, even if it was only $100.

If you don't already have a player there is no point in getting HD movie player.

Anyone who says they can't see the difference in a blu-ray disk to a regular dvd even when played on a player that upscales to 1080p is freaking blind. I have half a dozen disks I've bought on blu-ray and put them in after the standard dvd on the upscale player and the difference in clarity is amazing. Watch Fifth Element on dvd then pop in the blu-ray.

i only need TWO disks total for my media. one 500 GB hard drive, and a second 500 GB hard drive.

by the time those 2 are full, i can just get a 2 TB one.

i constantly feel sorry for those consumers who get screwed by greedy sony.

They sell combo players that play both formats.

@C2D:

Hahahaha! In lots of colors! So that Gizmodo can go on and on about them. "Oooooh! Apple introduced a PINK bluHDVD player today."

/They'd have to come up with a snappy name for it. Maybe tVision or something like that.

for anyone reading this comment section. please take everything you are reading from the blu-ray and hd-dvd camps with a grain of salt.

there is so much mis-information and conjecture here I don't know where to begin.

@Asvetic:

Also, Sony took years to get with the MP3s.

@Chicago7: You're right; combo players are on the market, for more than the cost of a standalone HD-DVD player *plus* a Playstation 3...

@Troy F.: True, but that's how it feels now. The pressure to purchase an HDTV hasn't set in yet. Your work will be cut out for you in 2009 when digital programming goes standard.

@Chicago7: That's because they had their own propriety format:
ATRAC. [en.wikipedia.org] Which in some regards was superior to MP3s.

@Asvetic:

The pressure to purchase an HDTV hasn't set in yet. Your work will be cut out for you in 2009 when digital programming goes standard.

It better be dirt cheap by then because I can say that the entertainment industry needs me more than I need them.

meh. I just need an HD-DVD reader and a Blue Ray burner, then even these paramount movies can easily be made to play on my PS3. As soon as an HD-DVD player for my desktop PC gets below $200, I'll snatch that up...