I feel the same way as Stringer....uninterested in the outcome.  I'm going to have to pay somebody for a unit and I don't care who.  Tt will be obsolete in 7 years anyway.

Sony may be banking on the higher margin flat panel TV sales rather than the low margin DVD player sales.  HD-DVD players (like classical DVD PLAYERS) will likely drop to <$100 before long.

Sony Blu Ray is the only way to go---My PS3 with Blu-ray is FANTASTIC----the game are getting better and better....the movie quality is STUNNING!  VHS vs BETA all over again!

Maybe the Sony BLU-Ray is the new Beta / VHS battle  way back in the day of

tape

WHO CARES

Blue ray vs HD-DVD hmmmm.

I wonder.  Is the quality all that better with either, or is it just a way to hype a new product for Corporate America to sell to unsuspecting consumers when the DVD player we already have works well enough.  

The only people that will benefit are the people who know the supply change for each product and get into those stocks, since we had to convert to DVD because VCR tapes are now extinct at Video stores.

This is just the old Beta vs VHS battle all over again.  One format will win out, Sony, likely won't...  HD-DVD just feels like more of an open standard and doesn't tie you to a single company.  While I like Sony equipment (although I could care less about PS3 - go XBOX 360!) I don't want to be tied to a specific company's DVD standard.  I'll be sticking with HD-DVD.

And drop the "paid off" comment in your story.  Are you writing for adults or conspiracy theorists?

-J

Blu-Ray or HD-DVD ? I built a Home Theater with 10 foot screen and front  DLP projector. I love Sony but the Ray player did not do anything so dramactically better than HD-DVD that warranted the several hundred more you need to dish out for it. The Blu-Ray has slightly better sound "on -paper"

(a dog couldnt hear the difference)  and that's about it. The Blu-Ray discs cost more to produce and are more prone to damage than the HDDVDs. Sony is not lucky enough to be a market mover when it comes to formats. Whatever format Sony puts out usually fails..VHS VS BETAMAX ? The BLU-Ray machines would rock if in addition to HDDVD they played Blu-Rays  too but they went to war with this format that is only marginally, maybe a little better sounding but a whole lot more expensive to produce and buy. Adult video might be the final nail in the Blu-Ray-HDDVD wars and it isn't gonna take a whole lot of analysis to figure the folks who make those films will go with the least expensive format wihch is HDDVD.And on top of that there's this little thing called x-box 360 and Halo 3 which is putting more HDDVD boxes in more homes every day. Sony needs to build a combo player and give them away at HDDVD player prices to get the market moving in it's direction. Good Luck

And nowhere in this discussion of "wins" is the consumer mentioned...

... and therein lies the problem.

After being burned by the "wins" and "losses" of VHS/Beta battle, any consumer with a memory won't commit one way or the other.  

Sony should know better.  (Grundig and Phillip seemed to have learned from their Video2000 efforts.)

If Target and Blockbuster think they can guess the market ... then it's taking place at the expense of their customers.  I hope their loss is their competitors' gain.

Circuit City's abortive DiVX effort illustrate that consumers on the whole are not as stupid as marketeers believe.  A pox on all the vendors participating in the HD/BluRay battle.  

Here's a clue, for a vendor that really wants to win this battle.  Give away your flavor of HD camera, your flavor of HD recorder/disk duplicator, your flavor of content safeguarding (e.g., macrovision for the low-res DVDs on the market today), as well as video-editing software compatible with your standard to three or four of the large porn companies -- with the proviso that they: one, publish every title in HD, and two, that they never publish to a competing standard.  

Once HD pornos are available for purchase, the market will open up ... and the best-represented vendor's product will win the battle.

This example of old school business marketing and strategy, just proves how little corporations, government and big business care about us, the consumer. The looser to this format war will just go with the victor and sell you another piece of merchandise because they too will manufacture it. Sony has a dumb but loyal customer base, who will no doubt double down their purchase because it has to be Sony. What was there to loose? TWO sales? I'm beginning to get tired of every corporate and governmental organization picking mine and everyone elses pockets clean for the sake of their gain... and a very obvious attitude of who cares about the consumer anyway...one day they'll all be sorry I'd like to hope.