[JET @ Jun 4th 2007 6:59AM]

The format war has left me sad. I have both a PS3 and a stand-alone HD-DVD player (the 360 add-on is junk). Both formats are essentially the same, but industry politics look likely to prevent them from ever being unified. The last time two competing high-end technologies went head to head was Super Audio CD vs DVD-Audio, and we all know how well that turned out. They both lost to direct downloads. MP3s may sound like crap, but they are convenient and cheap.

360 has an impressive offering of HD (720p, 640kb audio) through X-Box Live. I expect cable & satellite services to beef up their HD VOD offerings. While I appreciate the difference between a low bitrate downloaded HD movie and an actual HD disk, I expect that I am in the extreme minority. Most people simply do not care about Dolby TrueHD or even, for that matter, 1080p.

Still, it is great that the players themselves are dropping in price. Be interesting to see if those prices drive sales. I mean, come on, only 13,000 copies of both HD Matrix sets combined sold (some for as little as $20 at Circuit City)? Only 30,000 copies of each of the two Pirates of the Carribean disks? Those are pretty sad numbers for formats that have been out for almost a year.

JET

[Corrupt @ Jun 19th 2007 5:48AM]

Excuse me, high bitrate mp3 does not sound like crap. Place the poor audio quality blame strictly on AAC thank you very much >_>.