Plus, here is the kicker:

Ultimately, a vigorous competition between the formats will hasten the collapse of HD player prices, and bring consumers closer to the day when both technologies are available at nominal cost. Keep in mind the rapid collapse of pricing in progressive scan DVD players over the last five years. Today’s $150 DVD player will outperform players that cost $1000 five years ago. We can expect to see the same price erosion in the HD player market going forward. Once HD-DVD and Blu-ray players are widely available for $200, it won’t matter which technologies the studios decide to support. The consumer will have won the war.”

If you’re worried about which format is going to have the staying power, this pretty much sums it up. Considering HD DVD players are already 1/3rd the price of Blu-Ray, within two years it’ll have more than a jump.

HD DVD players must have a storage system, meaning the player stores data directly off the disc, making it available for instant recall. The whole format is highly interactive, with menus loading simultaneously with video. After the disc has booted up, thats pretty much it. You can navigate the special features on menus that simply overlay themselves on the video playing in the background or watch commentary/interviews that behave basically like a picture-in-picture. I had become jaded to slower navigation on regular DVDs, often never watching many special features because it was tedious to do so - not anymore; and believe me, the second you experience this on an HD DVD, you’ll fall irreparably in love with it. Blu-Ray is more or less a higher capacity DVD - the implementation of playback/disc authoring really didn’t change at all.

Plus, HD DVD is completely region free and you would be surprised at the number of HD DVD titles out in Europe and Asia that aren’t out here - Total Recall, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Mulholland Drive spring to mind. You know me - I absolutely hate to know someone is intentionally crippling my usage of what I’ve paid for. Sony, in all their greed, still has region coding.

As for image quality, I can’t testify there from personal experience, but I’ve heard from multiple people that Blu-Ray often looks a tad less pretty than an HD DVD of the same title. That could entirely be connections or how a Blu-Ray player handles its own color, contrast etc etc, however. Once you’re dealing with those resolutions, talking picture quality is basically going to be like comparing supermodels. It is going to look good no matter what, so you have to consider what else its capable of.

Plus with Sony’s media track record being Beta max, Laser disc, and Smart media, I feel safer investing into HD DVD. With all the measures HD DVD is taking to make it more affordable and available it appears they’ll be winning the battle soon. Though Sony keeps talking about reducing the price of the PS3. I wonder how much money they make talking about it while the PS3 continues to tank.

Totally agree on the free disc selection, though.

Lemme check that…

No. No, it wasn’t.

DVD is fine by me. All I need is anamorphic widescreen and I’m a happy guy.