when do you think the war will end?

I don't think HD DVD will die anytime soon. That said I fully expect Blu-ray to emerge as the clear winner by the Christmas '07 shopping season and by mid '08 HD DVD will be not much more than a memory. At CES '08 the BDA will again declare victory but this time they'll have a mountain of hard evidence to back it up. My advice, buy a PS3, it's a great Blu-ray player and inexpensive compared with the others.

Note to flamers: The above represents my opinion.

For me it already has. I've stopped buying HD-DVDs because of parity of Warner new release titles on HD-DVD and BD. I'm taking back my 360 add-on I got for Christmas and possibly the whole XBOX 360 if the new HDMI equipped model rumors are even remotely true. Warner will be keeping HD DVD alive by being neutral, but it's no longer an advantage.

I only had a handful of HD DVDs, all exclusives, and if there's any chance of them coming to BD, then I'd rather stick with one format.

This summer at the absolute earliest (e.g. if Universal or Disney & Fox defects), and probably not until next holiday season. I do think there will be a clear cut winner by CES next year, although the doomed format may still continue to trickle out releases for another year or two.

More disturbing, niether format may win, and every day that consumer adoption is slowed down by this war makes it more likely that some other option (e.g. download on demand) will fracture the movie market yet more. That's (one of) the reasons why MS is supporting the under-dog in this format war, btw.

In my opinion. I see both staying for quite a few years. Right now there are too many unknowns to think one will win over the other. HD DVD's trojan horse is the Chinese players and when they hit our shores (just like BD had the PS3). If it happens this year it's a stalemate and studios will stay the way they are if they're pigheaded (both sides).
I have both and think it will be that way for a while.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion. I just happen to disagree. I think people are overreacting and changing their buying and viewing habits based solely on self-serving publicity announcements coming from the BR camp at CES. People are taking a LOT of marketing and blu-sky predictions somehow as "fact" that really should not be. If you look at the hardware front, there's a lot more happening with HD-DVD than BR.

All that said, I think both formats will be around for the foreseeable future, meaning more than 1 year.

As soon as possible hopefully, I pray that everyone of them makes it home safely.

Cheap chinese HD-DVD players in Walmart will be a quantum shift.

That alone takes this out of the hands of the electronics hobbyist and into the unwashed masses.

My prediction is 3 years.

-Robert

My prediction is < 1.5 years, and if there aren't substantially more HD DVD titles announced soon ...

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

as compared to:

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates.html

then < 6 months.

Ah man.....now I'm bummed - I was hoping cheap players from both sides would end it sooner...........so I could get off the sidelines.

It depends on what you mean by "over".

I think the studios are becoming very upset by the format war and the damper it has put on adoption and sales. I think they are going to do something drastic somehow to put an end to this.

The clearest sign I saw at CES is that the studios are trying to take the initiative and the HW manufacturers are playing it by their books. I was surprised at how little HD DVD and Toshiba had to say this time. The LG combo has very serious issues, as documented in other threads.

I believe that the Blu-ray studios are now going to push everything they have for Blu-ray in the next 6 months or so. Their plan is to put Blu-ray over the top and to get Universal to support it, making it clear that HD DVD is a vestigal choice.

If this doesn't work by summer or the end of the year at the latest, look for some new initiative by the studios. Perhaps all of them will switch to the new Warners THD disk or something, perhaps they will all declare a winner and drop the other format, I don't know what will happen.

With the level of customer interest and adoption outside of the early adopters, I cannot imagine this dragging on for 3 years as Robert indicates.

BRD didn't announce a cheap player at CES. There was just the announcement from Microsoft and Broadcom that they have a cheap design at Chinese manufacturers.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4501097&EDATE=

Format war is over. Microsoft dropped the Big One.

Cheap chinese HD-DVd players means less quality players.

unless somebody from Japan will take care of the quality control.
a lot of japanese companies making products in china,have a japanese supervisor to take care of the quality control.

actually in japan it is seen as a weakness when a japanese company tries to make chinese players to survive. they simply say there is no bushido ( samurai spirit ) in toshiba. and to survive they need chinese players. that is maybe 1 of the reasons why HD-DVd isnt a succes in Japan at all.

And if the chinese player is defective, the customer takes advantage of the generous Walmart return policy and swaps it for a good one. They do it all the time with other electronics.

Actually the Japanese term I'd look for from BRD is "Shiimata" (we goofed).

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4501097&EDATE=

awesome! microsoft uses http://www.thedvdwars.com/index.cfm as part of the sales tactics lol. that is very very funny. it clearly states that the source is microsoft.

what is even more funny is the relationchip with microsoft and amazon. microsoft made a huge deal with amazon a few months ago to include microsoft windows live search engine.

what wouldhappen if microsoft actually manipulate that search engine? since they are the ones that are creating it now.

That might explain why some Blu-ray titles are a challenge to find on Amazon now. I used to be able to key in the title of the movie and the word blu-ray and I'd get the result I wanted. Now that doesn't always work even though it makes perfect sense for their search engine to work that way. I don't know if Microsoft has anything to do with this or if it's Amazon itself... either way, something's broke now that was perfect a couple of weeks ago.

4:17 A.M. EST January 3rd 2010

edit

04:17:02 A.M. EST January 3rd 2010

Content will win this fight. After listening to the President's speech last night I'm having a problem using the word "war" on something as trivial as movie entertainment.

HD DVD backers believe cheap Chinese players are the answer while BD backers cite overwhelming studio support as the winnig ticket. Who's right? I care a whole lot more about the movies I watch than the players I use to watch them. If HD DVD cannot get Fox or Disney to go nuetral this year or at the very least CES 2008 I just can't see them surviving past next spring/summer.

Same thing I've been saying. Since the last Beta player rolled off the line in 2002, I give it 5 or 6 years before one format gains an edge, but both formats will be around at least ten years. Remember it took 10 years to get more DVD players in homes than VCRs.

It'll take some time, but not more than 2 years in my opinion. If Blu-ray can hurry up and get a $3-400 player on the store shelves in the next 6 months there's a chance they could come out the victor, but without an affordable player (the PS3 is really an overpriced toy in my opinion), movie buffs and J6P's will go with HD DVD based on it's value. Anotehr factor is the studios. Blu-ray disks cost more to produce, so either you let it cut into your profit margin, or you increase the price as the Blu-ray exclusive studios have done.
Sony and Fox like to use trickery to force consumers to think they're getting more, but in reality, their greed and arrogance has become too much to bear for most consumers.

I'd agree with you if this war were going to be decided by folks who own dedicated home theater setups, but we know that's not the case. The war will be decided by the "average" consumer that works a blue collar job, not blu-collar job.

I believe that 100 million people being able to afford/want to pay for hd-dvd compared to 1 million being able to affor/want to pay for blu-ray will win the war.

Content matters, but frankly, my HD-A1 upconverts the SD-DVD version of blu-ray only titles very well.

Content is a very minor factor right now. Currently, both formats have hundreds of titles available or coming. If movie titles mattered THAT much everyone would have paid through the nose for a laser disc instead of DVD since you could watch Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc. on it. Video stores would still be stocking VHS and DVD would never have gotten a foothold.

The HD market is just going to be swamped by the sheer scale of cheap chinese HD-DVD players. Lite-On IT Corp. and Zhenjiang Jiangkui Group Co. can produce that many. They'll just be stacked up in Walmart kiosks with that big MARK DOWN sign.

If sony can produce a $600 PS3 with blu-ray, cell processors ect., why can't they produce a stand alone blu-ray player for $200-300? I would really like to know that. I'd be willing to support both formats @ that price point.

So could an Oppo and it would cost less and probably has discrete IR codes. Nobody is buying into an HD format just to watch upconverted SD DVDs. Asssuming the goal is to watch as few SD movies as possible HD content is not just the most important thing, its the only thing.

Unless those chinese HD players end up costing the same as the chinese SD players.

But I get enough HD-DVDs to last me until blu-ray is either much cheaper or blu-ray only studios do both formats.

From what I've heard in the past, blu-ray isn't much better than upconverted sd-dvds anyways. Except on the PS3, because it doesn't upconvert very well.

Prediction: The war won't officially be over until the end of the year, but the outcome will be a forgone conclusion by June.

2-3 years.