Blue Ray is winning and will win this war. There's a reason why the prices are going down, and also why you get 5 free movies. Dont get me wrong is great for the consumer, but dont invest your hard earn money on a technology that will not be around for much longer.

The price drop is great, to bad the free movie chocies you have suck. 15 movies that did not sell well. There are no new movies available, all older titles that have a lot of overstock. To make matters worse they make sure you can only choose 1 or 2 movies you actualy want as they make you choose in 5 groups of 3 titles per group. Rest assured all the good movies are in the same group.

$28 for a disc that sits on the shelf? No thanks! I'd rather rent it from Netflix 5 times and save a few bucks. For $28 I could afford to take the whole family to a movie theater, or buy pizza.

giving away 5 movies free worth around $140 total when you buy a $300 player seems like quite the deal!

Now all we need is to see dual-mode players for that cheap, and then people will no longer play the waiting game for an official standard to snatch them up. A $300 for a dual-mode player, you wouldn't really need an official standard.

If they keep this price drop, when the holiday season comes this year, expect a LOT of HD-DVD players to be under the tree. People are finally learning that there is not really any difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, so the price required for Blu-Ray is wasted. Blu-Ray only holds about 12% more movie space, 9 vs. HD-DVD 8. And with 8 hours anyway, who needs more for 99% of the video's sold today? Take into account the longevity issues brought on Blu-Ray discs, and Blu-Ray's days are numbered.

say what you will about BluRay Raul, but it is price that drives the market, not movie studio support. HD-DVD is cheaper and gets the job done. Only an idiot would want to pay more for something they arent going to use. The movie studios will switch if they want to make money.

Now with the release of the HD2000 line allowing full 1080P HDMI. Once they fix the drivers you can encode in VC-1.

As long as movies are released in HD-DVD format and the customer base groys. It's a no brainer for the underground to get the XBOX HD-DVD and Any-DVD HD.

You yuppies can stick with over priced crap ray. 800 plus for players give me a break.

From what speculation is blu-ray winning "yet". It seems neither side has hold enough reputation at this moment of HD wars. This promotion is nice although I still think it's not time yet to buy an HD DVD, yet i wont use "waste of money" to describe it since Blu-ray isnt any worth the money yet.

At this point I still dont see myself buying it yet =(

...bag.

Looks around, your praised Blu-Ray is doing the same thing. Only they have 5 movies to give away- not 15 choices. Crash, Transporter, Fantastic Four, the two Pirates movies. Yeah, four old movies and a new Pirates...WOW. How many adults (men) who throw out $500 for a player want to watch some freaking pirates and a cheese-dick comic movie?!

If Hd-DVD wins, then Sony will be supporting its own proprietary releases in blue ray for ps3 users.
Does anyone know whats been happening to their psp?
Their movie UMD Disk sells are declining considerably.
I'd hate to see them get cornered like that with bluey.

"Their movie UMD Disk sells are declining considerably."

Haven't you read? UMD's have been pulled off shelves from many big-box stores already, and most studios have completely cancelled production of video UMD's long ago.

Thank for the lesson.
Long live Sony A(without the monopoly)

Sounds like they're both going to be around for a while. Problem with HD-DVD is it's too hard to say. That's the biggest reason BluRay will probably win. We should at least give HD-DVD a chance at least by renaming it DVD-HD... Say it a few times and you'll see what I mean.

Is there that many hours with full 1080p video and 6 channels (i.e. 5.1) of uncompressed 24 BIT 96 kHz audio? Or is that hour count using lower quality audio and video?

Also is that hour count also assuming that the Disc has an interactive menu on the disc?

I know that Blu-Ray can hold 50 GB per disc vs HD-DVD at 30 GB, but that may not be a good thing. Say there is a tv series that clocks in at 100 GB. Blu-Ray would require only two discs while HD-DVD would need four. Since consumers as a whole are not very well educated, what one looks more appealing? The 2 disc Blu-Ray set or the 4 disc "ultimate edition" HD-DVD version. I seem to recall that there was a study that showed that people are more inclined to purchase a 2 disc DVD over a single disc, two sided version because it seems like they are getting more for their money. Coming at it from this angle, it may actually hurt Blu-ray to need less discs.

Disclaimer: I don't own either format and don't really care which one has cooler animated menus, more space for deluxe features, or anything like that. Whoever gets Criterion on their side or puts out Lord of the Rings will probably get my money...then I'll be a fanboy of that format.

DVD-HD is being used by the current upscaling market of older DVD's. And they are catching a lot of consumers off guard. Because some sales-persons are telling consumers it's the same quality as blue ray and HD-DVD.

I've seen some of these are over priced close to HD-DVD at 200 to 300 plus and only upscale to 720P. 400 and up if they add reg dvd recording.

I've only seen a couple that do 1080P upscaling, the reviews were good but why buy when you're so close to the real thing.

This sucks, 1080I tops
Plus regular dvd upscaling is not up to par.

Blue ray price is coming down, but I haven't checked if its stripped as well.