Was at our local Hollywood Video to get my free B-day dvd rental and saw that they had a small section of HDM...nothing appeared to be rented out though...

One thing that stood out though..and is SURE to cause issues down the road for the masses....each rack had a big corporate sign/banner above it...Blu's had a blue sign with the log, and a red sign for HD DVD...in the corner of the HD DVD sign it said "Requires an HD DVD player"....and get ready for it folks.......

The corner of the Blu sign said "Requires an HD DVD player"....

Oh yeah....GREAT way to get people to scratch their head if they don't yet own an HDM player or were on the fence..."Really honey, it says this Blu Ray can play on an HD DVD player and we HAVE an HD DVD player!!"

:rolleyes:

I told the nice girl working there that the sign was incorrect and she just smiled and said "Oh ...." then paused and said, we really haven't rented any of those so...maybe some day it will catch on".

On a better note, the sign next to them said $3.99, although the guy at the counter said it would be $7 per rental...OUCH!!!!

So there ya go...story number 102 about how local shops are doing a great job confusing the masses when it comes to HDM.

^^ as a renter and frequenter of HV, I am more concerned about them NOT renting HDM in your store just as it is in mine. I am literally the only one in my town of 15k that rents BD's. They have both and no one has touched either BD's or HD DVD's in my local store in the two weeks they have been out. I seriously doubt DVD was like this. Although when I set my HTPC up 3 years ago, I wanted HDM then and all that was available was WMP HD.

Actually, if your local video store is renting HDM, count yourself lucky...in fact, count yourself very lucky because as early adopters, we can rest assured knowing that most of the hottest HD titles will still be available for rent while their DVD counterparts are long gone.

It was the same for me back in April 2000 when I bought my first DVD player. Most people roamed around the VHS shelves while I stood in front of a small rack of DVDs that only had one copy of each title.

It's Deja vu.

Yet another example of why having two HDM formats just suck.