Analyst: consumer fog of war means high def disc stalemate
Two sides indiscriminately embroiled with no end in sight, doing damage to all things and people around them in the process -- sounds more like current events, but it's actually also an apt description of the sad state of the next gen optical disc battle, as surmised by Screen Digest chief analyst Ben Keen. Like many, Keen believes consumers are getting the short end of the stick (uh, ya think?), and that the two competing standards are doing a better job of "dampening" the consumer drive to buy high def discs out fear of obsoletion than they are providing a compelling incentive to invest. Keen suggests the two standards will merely continue to do damage to the market place until a dual-format player arrives or until they're replaced by newer technologies; while we don't necessarily entirely disagree, the simple fact of the matter is if you want to watch high def movies at home and don't want to download a 30GB MPEG-4 file (or deal with the crap they show on high def cable), right now your choices are two: HD DVD, and Blu-ray. Better get used to it, amigos.
