JupiterResearch calls format war futile
By Steven Kim 
posted November 2nd 2007 10:37PM
posted November 2nd 2007 10:37PM
JupiterResearch has added its opinion to the line of analysts weighing in on the format war. Its report titled "Next Generation DVD: Will the Winner Be HD DVD, Blu-ray, or None of the Above?" found both formats at risk, so it'll come as no surprise that they picked choice "C." Citing confusion between formats, larger catalogs for DVDs and competition from other distribution mechanisms, the report concludes that upscaling DVD players are the real competition faced by HDM. But rather than throwing in the towel for HDM, we think hardware manufacturers should take a hint form the study and tout the fact that every HDM player is a great upscaling DVD player, too!
Just buy a Blu-ray player. Blu-ray is the obvious future of HD Content. Blu-ray has 100GB per disc vs. HD-DVD's 30GB. If you know anything about the two formats, you know that HD-DVD has no chance. Microsoft is fighting tooth & nail to keep the HD-DVD format alive. For some odd reason, the USgovernment allows Microsoft to make bribes, payoffs & Kickbacks to companies like Paramount & Dreamworks without taking any recourse. Without the payoffs, the HD-DVD format would have died already. But it's ok because even with M$'s payoff to Paramount for Transformers exclusivity, HD-DVD STILL couldn't outsell Blu-ray. It's a big joke. Paramount would have made $300 million if transformers would have been released on Blu-ray. So the joke is on them. They would have sold over 2 million copies of Transformers on the Blu-ray format. Who looks like the moron??? Paramount! Go Blu!
@superdynamite
Wow, what a desperate post, are you panicking because HD DVD players, which have lot's more features than blu ray, are at a price point that BR cant match for years and years to come.
And please, enough mud slinging about M$, sony is the "king of slings", they have paid off, bribed, coerced, forced more people and organizations into deals than you or I have had hot meals.
Blu ray has a 60% share, of 1% of total DVD sales, so the argument about having a massive sales lead is pitiful, both sides discs sales are poor.
However, BR has 20 times more players than HD DVD disguised as games consoles, but only a marginally better software sales ratio.
With the current Walmart & others deal now supplying quality HD DVD players to the mass market at a fantastic price point, it would be logical to think that HD DVD will overtake BR movie sales stats, sooner rather than later.
HD DVD players with more features and a finished format for $300 less than the closest work in progress BR player spells doom for BR.
Sony has rushed this product to market in an unfinished format that is simply to expensive for most consumers and tried to bully the market into acceptance via the failing PS3.
Game Over blu ray.
h4idol with a new name perhaps?
Wow, and blu ray has 100GB per disc!
You should have done some better research on your non specified, unfinished, work in progress player and it's software, because they aren't 100Gb, that's just being silly or desperate, or both.
If Microsoft wanted to make HD DVD dominant, it would just buy Sony, the way Sony bought MGM, Columbia and Tristar.
yeah, he/she is getting a little excited. its 50 and they have a protype of 100 and a theoretical of 200 or something like that? And HD-DVD has a 51 prototype or something? In anycase, the more space the better long term.
My ps3 makes a better HD player than my Toshiba HDDVD player from my experience but I think it basically just going to come down to dual format players. They will eventually become cheap enough.
@EB
Strange, all the reviews say the opposite to your experience.
Personally, i don't mind the format war, it means, as a consumer, i can purchase a quality player at a very low price.
I cant see why both formats cant co exsist, every other sector of the market place has competition, why not HD players? there are a million HD TV's you can buy, why do we have to be forced into 1 format?
I prefer, and have bought a cheap HD DVD player but I will buy a BR player when it is below $200 also, and if they can survive that long.
i dont think for 1 minute the format war is stopping HD uptake, price and DVD is stopping HD uptake.
It will be very interesting to see the impact the cheap HD DVD players have on the market over the next few months.
Smee,
"i dont think for 1 minute the format war is stopping HD uptake, price and DVD is stopping HD uptake."
Do you have your head in the ground somewhere? Were you born on another planet you seem to wear your ignorance proudly for all to see.
Tell you what, both formats have been out for more than a year - if you were to actually do ANY research and compare sales and/or rentals of both standards to DVD what do you think you would find? What percentage of the market do you think that both formats have?
JupiterResearch is right, one side or the other may win the battle, but the battle itself can cost them the war. SACD vs DVD-A - look at what that battle did!
- Roger
I think making the comparison of competition to TVs isn't fair. There are many formats for TVs: CRT, LCD, PDP, etc. But the thing is, they all can show the same content, I don't have to worry who my cable or satellite provider is before I buy a TV. For HD players, I have to worry that I may not be able to watch a certain movie because it's only available in 1 format. Regardless, there would still be competition if there was only 1 HD disc fomat, the competition between the different brands...However I would agree that prices would not have dropped this low for a player this fast.
Funny, you see this debate on every HD DVD and Blu-Ray note. Both of you are smoking crack if you think the "WAR" is between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. IT IS NOT!!!
The battle is between DVD and the need for a HD standard. The audio industry just went through the same thing. SACD vs. DVD-Audio, which won? MP3.
Anyone else want to chime in about how one format is better than the other? I love listening to people try and convince people that one standard is better than the other when in reality you just bought a player and you do not want to end up on the loosing side. Of course your team never looses.
The whole point of the article here is that YOU CAN WIN THE BATTLE AND STILL LOOSE THE WAR! The battle itself will doom either from being adopted and in the end WE ALL LOOSE.
- Roger
P.S. Perhaps someone should start a website so people can continue this debate after everyone stops producing new players because no one adopted it. It looks like "superdynamite" and "800lb Gorilla" will be there!
"SACD vs. DVD-Audio, which won? MP3."
Exactly! People are already downloading TV shows and movies onto their iPods and/or computers. Downloading is the future, not a plastic disc.
The hardware guys just have to make it more convenient to play those video files on our TVs. I think the Sansa guys are on the right track with their new TakeTV product...
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/22/sandisk-sansa-taketv-hands-on/
...although they'll have to upgrade it for HD, but I don't think that'll be too difficult.
P.S. Perhaps someone should start a website so knob jockeys like roger_houston can continue this debate with himself, because even though he is new to this site he thinks he is god and his arrogant opinions are law.
which makes me wonder why. If you came to my house and saw the difference you would know what I mean.
can you send me an article that has that comparison I would be interested in seeing it? I am not challenging you I am sincerly interested in reading about it.
I have a cheaper Toshiba player(although its 1080p it says) and only two hd-dvds, and I have like 10 blu-rays so my comparison may not be fair.
BD (Blu-Ray) single-Layer Disc = 25GB
BD Double-Layer = 50GB
BD Tri-Layer = 75GB
BD Quad-Layer = 100GB
BD Six-Layer Prototype (TDK) = 200GB
Look it up - Wikipedia
Although the Blu-ray Disc specification has been finalized, engineers continue working to advance the technology. Quad-layer (100 GB) discs have been demonstrated on a drive with modified optics (TDK version) and standard unaltered optics ("Hitachi used a standard drive."). [108][109] Hitachi stated that such a disc could be used to store 7 hours of 32 Megabit/s video (HDTV) or 3.5 hours of 64 Megabit/s video (Cinema 4K). Furthermore TDK announced in August 2006 that they have created a working experimental Blu-ray Disc capable of holding 200 GB of data on a single side, using six 33 GB data layers.[110]
Also behind closed doors at CES 2007, Ritek has revealed that they had successfully developed a High Definition optical disc process that extends the disc capacity of both competing formats to 10 layers. That increases the capacity of the discs to 250 GB for Blu-ray compared to 150 GB for HD DVD using the same process. However, they noted that the major obstacle is that current reader and writer technology does not support the additional layers.[111]
JVC has developed a three layer technology that allows putting both standard-definition DVD data and HD data on a BD/DVD combo. If successfully commercialized, this would enable the consumer to purchase a disc which could be played on current DVD players, and reveal its HD version when played on a new BD player.[112] This hybrid disc does not appear to be ready for production and no titles have been announced that would utilize this disc structure.
Hitachi has recently showcased 100GB Blu-ray Disc, which consists of four layers containing 25GB each. Unlike TDK and Panasonic's 100GB disc, this disc is readable on standard Blu-ray drives that are currently in circulation, and it is believed that a firmware update is the only requirement to make it readable to current players and drives.[113] TDK has also produced a 200GB six-layer prototype.
How in the world does Toshiba think it's ever going to make any money from the HD-DVD format? I mean, seriously.
You may have heard by now that Toshiba has made pre-Black Friday arrangements with Wal-Mart to effectively dump its HD-A2 HD-DVD player starting this Friday (this weekend only) for just $98.87. You may also have heard that Best Buy has followed suit. Supplies are limited, of course, and the offer is apparently not valid in some parts of the country that have state anti-dumping laws.
Wikipedia defines dumping as "the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at a price which is either below the price it charges in its home market or is below its costs of production." Toshiba's move isn't really anti-competitive, because there are no U.S. manufacturers making HD-DVD players. But it's that "below its costs of production" part that applies in this case. The HD-A2 arrived in the States with an original MSRP of $499.99. Now, Toshiba is letting it go for just $99. There's no way the player cost less than $100 to manufacturer. Just. No. Way.
You might wonder: How can Toshiba possibly have enough HD-A2s left to sell at just $99 at large, nationwide retailers? Simple. It's because they didn't sell originally, so plenty of stores still have them sitting on shelves, gathering dust. Toshiba is eager to clear them all out at this point, and Wal-Mart and Best Buy are happy to help.
Clearly, the HD-DVD camp understands that low price is really the only card they have left to play in this format war. Porn hasn't won the war for them as predicted, nor have online bells and whistles, or combo discs/players. The obvious question would be: Why in the world would any other hardware manufacturer want to join Toshiba's foolhardy strategy of driving player prices down to next to nothing? It's no accident that not a single other major manufacturer has released a stand-alone HD-DVD player (and no, the Venturer doesn't count). Given how dramatically Toshiba has slashed prices on HD-DVD players over the last year, you have to wonder how long they can keep losing money.
Forget for a moment that the HD-A2 isn't capable of delivering full 1080p video - that doesn't matter. Why? Because anyone who is so price sensitive that they wait until a high-def player price hits $99 to buy one isn't likely to have an HDTV set yet. Being super bargain shoppers, they aren't likely to want to pay $30 for an HD-DVD movie either. I'd bet many of the people who jump on this sale will either be using them primarily as upconverting DVD players, or they're already diehard HD-DVD supporters and are buying them as second players. For those regular consumers who take the bait, I wonder how they'll feel when they realize they can't play those big Disney titles in the "blu" boxes due next week.
Speaking of which... a couple weeks ago, when Disney and Sony launched the successful strategy of counter-selling their Blu-ray software titles 2 for 1 the same week Paramount and DreamWorks released Transformers on HD-DVD, we got a few e-mails from HD-DVD fans telling us how lame that was. Is it any accident that Toshiba didn't wait for Black Friday to sell their $99 players, instead carefully planning the 3-day sale for the weekend before Disney and Pixar release Cars, Ratatouille and the Pixar Short Films Collection on Blu-ray? Not a chance. So Toshiba is slashing HD-DVD hardware prices to counteract the release of blockbuster Blu-ray software. What does that tell you about the viability of HD-DVD going into a fourth quarter that, by all accounts, is make or break for the format? (Especially with Warner Home Video now hinting that they're looking at the fourth quarter to "reevaluate" their dual format support)
There's no doubt that thousands of eager consumers will get a deal on cheap hardware this weekend. But it still isn't going to be the format war winner for HD-DVD that some would like to believe. On the contrary, it means that Toshiba is getting desperate enough to adopt an all-or-nothing strategy... and is going even more deeply into the red with this format. Meanwhile, given the strength of their rhetoric this week, it's a safe bet that the Blu-ray camp will pull their gloves off too in the fourth quarter, and start getting more aggressive in the weeks and months ahead.
It boggles the mind to think that any reasonable person can still believe at this point that the HD-DVD format represents a viable long-term business. Even if Toshiba's strategy has the desired effect (which seems primarily to be garnering splashy headlines in the press), what do they ultimately win? A tie? The best case for HD-DVD, even if Warner were to be so impressed by this sale that they go HD exclusive, would be to effectively create a 50/50 split in terms of studio support. In other words, a total quagmire. High prices were the number one reason most surveyed consumers cited for staying away from high-def discs in the recent NPD Group survey, but the existence of two competing formats was not far behind. And just as many people who said that price was their chief concern also said that they're happy enough with current DVD to have no interest in upgrading to high-def discs anyway. So all this seems to be more a battle waged for the press and PR spin than the actual hearts and minds of consumers.
Keep in mind, contrary to the opinions of some online, we don't think HD-DVD is a bad format at all. If it were the only HD format around, we'd be all over it here at The Bits. But Toshiba is effectively paying studios to support it, and now they're practically giving the hardware and software away. Do you suppose we'll see free HD-DVD player offers in Cracker Jacks and cereal boxes next? $50 players? $25 players? 2 for 1 players?
Experienced fighter pilots will tell you that when you dive your aircraft at the deck, you very quickly run out of maneuvering room. It seems to me that the ground is coming up awfully fast for HD-DVD. Either way, it's looking more and more as if this fourth quarter could decide the format war... one way or another.
And to think... there was once a time when we all hoped that these two sides would work out their differences and create a single, unified high-def disc format. Those were the days, as they say.
Back with more later. Stay tuned...
superdynamite
So many words, so little thought. Truly you are a person who can't see the forest for the trees.
- Roger
What a load of BS.
The reason both formats have not grown is for 2 main reasons.
1) The price of hardware and software has been to expensive for mass market adoption, SIMPLE.
Only early adopters picked up at the inflated price points.
Hopefully, HD DVD has just fixed that problem
2) The other main issue is DVD itself. An upscaled DVD does a damn fine job, and again relating to price, why would the mass market ie J6 switch from what is doing a damn fine job and cheaply, to products he dosen't even know about yet, and if he does, they were to expensive.
3) The average consumer has never heard of the format war, most have never even heard of BR or HD DVD. Geez, most don't even have HD TV's yet for gods sake!
It's only tech geeks like us that know whats going on in the HD world!
Now hopefully, HD DVD has just addressed those issues with plenty of positive press and cheap prices and with luck things are about to change.
That's my opinion and I'm entitled to it, so maybe you should get your head out of your ass!
roger_huston...
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???????
DLP, Plasma, LCD, LCoS and such don't really constitute formats in the same way that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are.
Those TV types are all different ways of displaying the same image signal. All those display types will display just about any kind of video source without problems. Sure, there are different, incompatible investments on the part of the manufacturer, but once I get the set, it doesn't matter.
That's quite different with the disc formats, I can't put a disc of one format into another player. However, I can plug any of those types of displays onto players of either format. There's nothing about the display type that requires that I buy special products just to be able to use that display type.
I really don't think that competing formats is as good for the consumer as competing display types. And it's not as if companies can't compete against each other on price and features using the same format.
@superdynamite
That's all good and fine, but you made a single flaw in your argument.
Wikipedia...Nice source....^:^ You should be automatically voted down for trying to pull that.
It isn't even close to a solid source or even be considered slightly valid.
@superdynamite
Wow agian with the wikipedia definitions?
Do you honestly use wikipedia for information for daily life? Weak dude, WEAK!
Wikipedia is a great source for many things. Just so long as fanboys aren't screwing with the article. If you aren't using it then you're probably either foolish or blind.
Not that that means that there are any 100GB blu-rays in the world. From what I see recently, they can't even get the players to work with the 50GB versions.
Anyway...
If you spend a few thousand on a new HDTV LCD, Plasma or DLP, do yourself a favor...
Go Blu. You'll save yourself hundreds of dollars in the long run. The HD-DVD player that Best Buy & Walmart is offering for less than $100.00 is NOT, I repeat, NOT 1080p. It is not full HD! It is basically a glorified DVD player that is modified to play HD-DVD discs.
If you know the history of both the BD (Blu-ray) & HD-DVD formats, you'd know the consumer BD prototype was introduced in the year 2000. Toshiba, in an attempt to have a format to use for competition, modified the standard DVD into what is known as HD-DVD and introduced that almost 3 years later. There would be no "War" if not for Toshiba's attempt to jump into the HD market, with an inferier format none the less.
lol I wondered when the "Dur it's not 1080p" comment would come. Good times.
HD DVD and BD are 1080p/24. It really doesn't matter much if you display that at 1080i/60 or 1080p/whatever. No one can tell the difference with an eyeball. Those that say they can are lying -- it's not possible from any reasonable distance.
@superdynamite
Wow, you are out of control, you are speaking so much BS I don't know where to start, To keep it short and sweet, your information is all wrong and you do not know what you are talking about.
Your posts are just ridiculous flame driven, fanboy paranoia..... Dude, i am embarrassed for you your posts are so lame!
You think those Disney releases will sell at all on BD? I don't see there being much of a demand since they are mostly for kids. If my kids wanted these movies, I would get the regular DVD so they could watch it on their own TV as well as in the car.
I have a BD & 1080p in every room. Disney will sell in my house. Also, my friend's kids have either BD and/or PS3 for their kids as well. They're all looking forward to the Disney releases.
I don't know about your kids, but the kids I know are smart enough to distinguish between Standard DVD & 1080p Hi Def. Every single one of them see the difference.
I Really doubt the kids you know could tell a difference.. Between Standard DVD and 1080p sure, but between standard dvd & 720p or 1080i?? Nah
@lamefirecracker aka superdynamite
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 1080i and 1080p
You really are making a goose out of yourself when you dont support your wild claims with some facts!
Read this fool
http://www.hometheatermag.com/gearworks/1106gear/index.html
Dude you have gone over the deep end!
"And to think... there was once a time when we all hoped that these two sides would work out their differences and create a single, unified high-def disc format. Those were the days, as they say."
Funny you should say that...since SONY was the jackass that said, F#$@ you DVD format group. I'm going to go make my own version, because I wanted my format to be the one. So Sony was the baby in this war and still is. It was really cooperative of Sony to mess up the unified format group of the last sucessful format. To think if Sony wasn't so money hungry this war wouldn't be happening. Fox studio's followed suit because Sony sold them on BD+ for security (which has been rumored to have been cracked already) Disney joined Sony because of the Apple Connection. Which what a surprise APPLE Money hungry "our OS shouldn't be on anything other than an Apple brand or Well you have to buy new accessories for your new ipod because the last gen doesnt work." (In saying this Microsoft does the same thing as well and I'm not saying they don't, but have you ever wondered if Toshiba didn't get Microsoft because Sony and Apple were trying to unfairly destroy what the last Generation format group declared to be the successor?) It just kinda funny when Blu-ray fanboys say that Toshiba paying off paramount was cheap, when the entire Blu-ray format was a jack@$$ move on sony because they felt cheated out of what they felt should have been the format. Blu-ray wouldn't have gotten anywhere if all the studios were neutral. HD DVD would have blown it out of the water, but Sony's cash cow company of many subsiduaries (Columbia pictures and Tristar) it would have sank like a rock. So which format is really on the assisted help plan still? Right now both are, but Blu-ray was on the back of sony's studio for longer than HD DVD was on Universal. Now they both have the same backing. One thing is for sure, Blu-ray wouldn't be here if studios were neutral, HD DVD being half the price of Blu-ray players would automatically sent Blu-ray to the grave. Oh well thats buisness.
(Note: I do own both formats, but I feel as if I really didn't have to buy two different players if companies would thought of the consumers? Oh wait that's right...It's about money not the consumer.)
"There would be no "War" if not for Toshiba's attempt to jump into the HD market, with an inferier format none the less."
You might want to look something up (Not on Wkikpedia though).
HD DVD is backed by the DVD format group. Blu-ray is the reason for the format war. Sony couldn't handle the fact that a cheaper format was picked by them then what they had painstakinly developed to have be the next format. The one thing alot of people don't realize Sony's Ceo is very "My way or nothing else." If it doesn't benefit sony then forget it.
BTW, HD DVD is not inferior. The only difference Blu-ray has is space, but how can you declare HD DVD inferior if it's 3 times the size of a DVD? You can't, because it's superior to the format it was designed to replace. Also you as well as I do, if sony didn't own a Movie studio, (and no one picked sides) HD DVD would have won it faster and easier then the RED SOCKS swept the World Series. Even the ps3 would have never saved it. It's all about price if it wasn't for studio's picking sides. Which is sad because in a Perfect competition system you let the consumer decide, because no normal consumer would ever buy a format player that is 8 times (or more) the price of a DVD player. They would go for the cheapest.
I think superdynamite must be Bill Hunt because that is Bill Hunt's fanboy rant. Try replacing Toshiba with Sony, and HD DVD with PS3 and you will get yourself a truly accurate article.
DeadPlasmaCell, can you read?
I said "I don't know about your kids, but the kids I know are smart enough to distinguish between Standard DVD & 1080p Hi Def. Every single one of them see the difference."
STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p! STD & 1080p!
They can ALL tell the difference. I NEVER mentioned 720 or 1080i.
Umm.. If you actually read what I said, I agreed with you in that they could tell a difference between SD & 1080p HD.. But who couldn't though?? You're acting like 1080p is an advantage Blu-Ray only has or something and I'm saying that those same kids wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 720p or 1080i on a $98 HD-DVD player compared to a $400+ 1080p Blu-Ray player.
LOL! The size is what makes HD-DVD inferior.
When did h4ldol change his user ID to superdynamite?
Killer, you need to do some reading up on the subject. The fact is, HD-DVD came out almost 3 years after blu-ray. Toshiba started the format war. Blu-ray had already been accepted by EVERY Hollywood movie studio.
The only studios that recently went exclusively to HD-DVD are Paramount/Dreamworks. It was because Microsoft paid them $150 Million to do so.
It's common knowledge. Look it up.
"The fact is, HD-DVD came out almost 3 years after blu-ray." And yet the first BD player came out just one year ago. So, that means that HD DVD comes out in late 2009? Odd.
Or do you mean the blu-ray trademark came out 5 years ago (3 years before the first HD DVD player, which came out 2 years ago).
Or do you mean the bag of wishful thinking and half-baked notions that they took to the DVD Forum and got laughed out of the room? Blu-sky is more like it.
Where you get your information is beyond me. If it says anything like that on Wiki it's because you just put it there.
Do you have a source for that?
There was a Japanese consumer electronic Blu-Ray recorder several years ago, but this was only for recording at home.
But, getting back to the actual article: upscaling DVD players are largely a fraud. They can do NOTHING that a good progressive DVD player and a good TV scaler cannot do. There's nothing magic about a scaler in a DVD player.
It's the modern equivalent of Fresnel lenses to "turn your TV into a big screen."
The difference is that not all TVs have good scalers. People assume they do, but it's not the case. That said, not all upscaling DVD players have good scaling chips either.
Not all TVs or DVD players have good deinterlacers. So if you have a good TV whose main weakness is scaling or deinterlacing, then you can buy an upscaling DVD player and you're good. The Toshiba XA2 does get among the highest scores for deinterlacing, so it is best of both worlds.
@superdynamite
We are all extremely impressed that you have a BD and 1080p HDTV in every single room of your house. You really sound like a 10 year old trying to impress all of his buddies by saying that.
Coming from someone who is format neutral, I hope Blu-Ray wins, if only for the effect it could have on your pocketbook if you have to replace all of those players in your house.
Wow,
Can you read? Did I say I had a BD & HDTV in "EVERY SINGLE ROOM"??? LOL! I have a 65" LCD in every bathroom!! LOL
You're a funny guy. Adding spin like the rest of the HD-DVD butt buddies!!! LOL
SuperDynamite,
I hope you realize how ridiculous your posts are. I barely ever comment on HD DVD or Blu-Ray items but seriously, do you think you are changing anyone's mind with your long winded responses? (Seriously Wikipedia?)
I think you also forget that there are a lot of low cost HDTVs that display 720p and 1080i and HD DVD player for 100 bucks fits perfectly with those. If someone has the money to drop on an expensive HDTV then they can probably handle paying for the 1080p HD DVD player, which still costs less than a BD player. The majority of HDTV in households today are not 1080p capable. The 1080p argument is fruitless.
The DVD Forum voted and supported the HD DVD format, not the Blu-Ray disc and that is common knowledge.
Lastly, Blu-Ray is the most idiotic name for a format ever. That isn't a decision maker for me, but seriously Blu-Ray. You can tell the BDA has realized consumer confusion as recent commercials consistently say "Blu-Ray Hi-Def discs" as compared to just "Blu-Ray" like they used to. Now thats a mouthful.
Also, if you are such a connoisseur of the format war you would know that there is no hyphen between HD and DVD.
HD-DVD isn't being desperate, it's common practice to discount hardware when newer models come out. This happened to be a big price cut (I think another popular tech product recently had an unexpected massive price cut), but coming around the time of early holiday shopping, not unusual at all.
So Blu-Ray discs can handle 100GB eventually? Cool, by the time the price of that comes down to acceptable consumer levels, we'll all be onto another format.
Jeff--
If there was something called blu-ray several years ago, it was only in name. The current version, which does not require a disc caddy for a fragile disc (among many other changes), is no more than 2 years old.
If all I have to do is name something and I own it, wishes WOULD be horses.