Because recording to optical is the day before yesterday.

Rick wilson,

I agree. Blu-ray should not have competition when it comes to recordable media since it was designed as a recording format first. My point was that the shine is taken off when you add non-universal playability and confusion about LtH/HtL/v2/v3/AACS-enabled etc. In the larger scheme, even polishing this bullet point with perfect execution would have had a limited impact since the HDD industry's advances have taken so much wind out of recordable optical market's sales in the years since Blu-ray was first introduced in Japan. (Even the more avid and wealthy among us are generally not inclined to purchase those $35 50GB disks.)

Ari,

"Stop spreading half truths. BD-R BDAV (no menu) should play back fine in all but one player and BD-R BDMV (with menus) should playback in all but two players and one of the players has it disabled in firmware as an anti-piracy measure."

Alright, I belive you. But is that with the v3.0 AACS-enabled media? And which players support which scenarios? I honestly don't know, and I honestly am not trying to spread half-truths. I do know for sure that using DVD-5 and DVD-9 recordable media is out of the question with Blu-ray, and that that is a shame for my home video purposes. I also know, in contrast to the situation during the early days of recordable DVD media, Blu-ray has competition on its hands while it works through these compatibility issues, and it would have been beneficial for them to capitalize on what could have been a bullet point in their favor.

It's amazing the situation Blu-ray is in WRT recordable media. In contrast to HD DVD, the format's design origin was recordable media, so they should be in a position to tout advantages in this regard. Instead, it turns out there is no way to make any one piece of recordable media playable on all available Blu-ray players! (Check your information carefully if tempted to condradict this). Meanwhile, folks can currently make short-duration HD media playable on all available HD DVD players using DVD-5 and DVD-9 media, and longer stuff on recordable 15 GB HD DVD media that is again compatible with all HD DVD players. Quite a turnabout.

Bachus: "once all the 60gb are gone we'll just be left with another permanent $600 PS3 except this time it has a game and 20gb more, right?"

You left out reduced backwards compatibility due to the removal of the emotion engine.

So Sony flushes out remaining sticks of a product that was not selling and that they could not afford to keep making, replaces it with a cheaper-to-make product with a key functional downgrade at the same old price, and receives widespread coverage calling it a major price cut. Quite a PR coup.

OK, I will grant that I was incorrect to say no display at all will be able to differentiate at that bit depth. I believe I can make up for that, however, by adding that HD DVD and Blu Ray do not support content of that bit depth, and neither does the telecine equipment used by hollywood to digitize films in the first place.

"important optional subset of the spec: 1080p in Deep Color"
Which displays support that HDMI profile and that optional subset again? Oh wait, there are none that could even visually resolve this color-bit depth even if they did. Yay marketing.

Journalists are taking a quick look at this for a zippy headline, but Blockbuster's press release and a subsequent CNBC video interview with their COO tell a more "shades of gray" story.

http://blockbuster.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=727

"The Company will continue to offer both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles through its online rental service, http://www.blockbuster.com/, and will continue to offer both formats at its initial 250 stores that currently carry both high-definition formats."

"While it is still too early to say which high-definition format will become the industry standard, we will continue to closely monitor customer rental patterns both at our stores and online, so we can adjust our inventory mix accordingly and ensure that Blockbuster is offering customers the most convenient access to the movies they want, in the format they want."

"Obviously, when customers are ready we can expand the Blu-ray offering into more stores and add HD DVD to more locations if that's what customers tell us they want. We'll continue to work with the movie studios to ensure we have the right assortment of products."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=383736735&play=1

"This is a nano-second in time..."

"We need to wait for this to play out over the next 12 to 18 months..."

"This decision does not preclude us from rolling out HD DVD..."

On another point, respectfully disagreeing with the above contention that "it won't matter" once dual format players are more common, I think the event that will really make these early zig-zags of a niche market academic will be the introduction of players with a truly mass-market price.

An insider on avsforum has said that LG plans to replace this model with one supporting HDi and carrying the HD DVD logo as soon as June of this year.

To Shogmaster's point, what a $1200 combo player will do is make it more difficult to sell the several Blu-ray only players that are in the $1,000 to $1,500 price range.

The insiders on avsforum say LG will release this player with the HD DVD ROM logo, and replace it this summer with a new model supporting HDi and thus qualifying for the HD DVD logo. The DVD Forum cannot prevent a product from being sold; only from carrying a logo if it is not spec compliant.