After reading todays article on this websight,

"Los Angeles, CA, August 20, 2007 – Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) and DreamWorks Animation SKG (NYSEWA), each announced today that they will exclusively support the next-generation HD DVD format on a worldwide basis. The exclusive HD DVD commitment will include all movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films, as well as movies from DreamWorks Animation, which are distributed exclusively by Paramount Home Entertainment."


I think this is just the first of many dominoes to fall. I've been waiting to make a decision on whether to buy an HD-dvd or Blu-ray player. I think it's becoming a no-brainer that HD-Dvd is going to win the format war. A local electronics/furniture store near me has a sell going on for the Toshiba HD-A2 player. The price is $250, plus you get your choice of 5 free HD movies which is about $150 worth of movies. I have a feeling around Christmas time HD players will be below $200.

One question I have, does anyone who reads this own an HD-DVD player,
and are you impressed with picture quality on your projector over standard DVD? Thanks.

We aren't going to get into format war debate on this site and you can be assured that the format war is a long way from over or decided upon at this point.

There are plenty of sites which have full blown discussions which you are free to participate in, but to this point of this year, HD DVD has been outselling stand alone players above Blu-ray players... at least until recently where some chains have reported Blu-ray players outselling HD DVD. (we'll see on that)

For the entire year, Blu-ray has maintained about a 2 to 1 lead on movie title sales, bolstered mostly through PS3.

So, despite the very low prices of Toshiba players and the excellent quality of HD DVD movies, it is still Toshiba vs. Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, right now.

For studios - it's Paramount/Universal exclusve against Sony, Fox, and Disney. WB being neutral.

I wouldn't call either side 'clearly' anything and we won't have arguments about it here.

That's kind of a different question as that isn't a Blu-ray vs. HD DVD scenario, but a DVD vs. HD opitcal disc scenario.

Blu-ray and HD DVD are very consistently delivering top notch video and audio quality. It is most noticable, I believe, in how there seems to be almost no compression artifacts at all like you see with DVD constantly. Top tier video quality is what you will get from a HD optical disc player of either format.

While there are fans of both formats, the reviews put quality of actual films pretty darn near dead even between both formats so neither has any true advantage in the video or audio quality you will get over the other player. But, both will deliver far better quality than DVD delivers.