::points at early adopters::

::laughs::

Didn't this website ( and every other tech site on the planet ) warn you that you might wanna wait a year or two for the dust to settle on this silly little format war?

DVDs pwn!

I'm going to wait until the format war is over and the price war is over, too. Waiting until after the war will score me a sweet HD/Blu-ray player for $100 in the near-enough future.

Why couldn't everyone from these big companies sit down in a room and pick one format? It would save time and money for everyone, like the DVD did.

The price does not deter me from buying a HD player, it is the dual format war. It just isn't worth it to buy one format and have it die. Yes, you can buy dual players, but then you sacrifice extras for compatibility.

And I continue to wait :)

Toshiba et al. should have done this many months ago. With PS3 sales slowly climbing, they absolutely needed to get as many inexpensive HD-DVD players ($99 for a 720p version sounds about right) out there as quickly as possible.
Now it appears to be too late...

i always felt like the writing was on the wall when the ps3 put in a blu-ray drive by default and xbox didn't.

the fact that blu-ray is the superior format didn't help things for HD-DVD.

The picture that most people unfortunately aren't picking up on is that if this is, indeed, near the end for HD-DVD, Blu-ray may not be that far behind. Out of the total percentage of DVD players being sold each year, the percentage of both HD DVD and Blu-ray combined is still a very small fraction. Basically, the adoption for HD in general is disappointing and, I'm sure, far below projections made by both sets of manufacturers. For me the question is whether there is enough demand to support either format. Even if just one of the two formats became the ipso facto standard for HD right now, the road to universal adoption seems an extremely long one considering the present market penetration of standard DVD and current DVD up-sampling player technology. It may be that the market ultimately rejects both HD DVD and Blu-ray.

However, lowering the entry price substantially seems to be the ticket, and I'm guessing that Toshiba's on the right track toward spurring demand (when demand is low you always reduce price until demand begins to spike again.) As far as any announcements by certain companies that they are dropping certain formats in the future is concerned, it should always be remembered that if market penetration percentages begin to change, then these companies can always change their minds about which formats they'll support, as well.

/me waits for Planet Earth to go on sale ;-)

I'd argue that given the length of time Blu-Ray has been around, and the market penetration it already has in such a short time, that it is already more successful than Laserdisc ever was. Not that Blu-Ray has thus far outsold Laserdisc, but on a scale based around the time constraints mentioned above, I think Blu-Ray has done quite well.

Laserdisc was around for 25 years and saw fairly widespread adoption in industry and education, to say nothing of home adoption. Blu-ray should be so lucky. It's done well enough for itself so far, I agree there.

And I'll say this, to be honest, until you mentioned it one time in the forums Vrock, I didn't even know they still made or sold Laserdiscs The last laserdisc was pressed in 2001, IIRC.

I think the general public is already much more aware of Blu-Ray, and because it isn't as prohibitively expensive as Laserdisc was even in its heyday, it will see a much more mainstream movement. Maybe. I kind of hope it stays a cinephile format though. For my own elitist reasons. :)

I think all of you people predicting that neither format wins and both go the way of the Dodo are very forgetful, and very shortsighted.

I guess none of you remember that it took time before DVD was adopted over VHS too. People had to buy new hardware, there weren't a lot of portable players out to begin with, prices were expensive (I payed over 30$ for my first few DVDs), etc etc. Sound familiar?

The only major difference once this format war is over and Blu-Ray is the format left standing, is that growth will be limited by purchases of HDTVs. I believe a much larger segment than most think already has, or will have, an HDTV within the next year. Remember, even a TV only capable of 720p is HD, and will show an increase in picture quality over SD, which is 480. So it's not even like people need to have an expensive 1080 set to see the benefit (though to be fair, they aren't that expensive these days, but I admit my sense of value may be warped in this case).

cant wait for blu ray to drop under 200

Well I guess they can either sell em dirt cheap or dump em in the ocean.

Since they would probably get in trouble for the second option, the first option makes more sense.

I would be curious to know if they are still making these models or if this is just to clear out stock during these final months of life.

At $200, I may pickup a spare player so I can continue to enjoy my HD-DVDs in case my HD-A1 gives up the ghost someday.

i guess it is the end of hd-dvd. everyone is now scrambling to sell off what they have, no matter what the loss is. i was wondering why the hd-a3 was selling for $99 for the holidays to the poor unsuspecting saps customers. I guess the corporations new this was gonna happen, as no BD player was on sale at the time.

At this point it doesn't seem like there is any reason for the Bluray camp to fire back with reduced pricing. Perhaps this is just to clear out stock so that the whole thing isn't a total lose for HDDVD.

Since I doubt I will see or hear any huge difference between a Blu-Ray and a HD-DVD movie for all but the longest, one feature that makes me wish for a HD-DVD come-back is actually region protection. Or rather, lack thereof.

Buying HDDVD is like buying betamax.