Per gig it's cheaper but also it's the same price per disc no matter what. On the front page I saw this and I noticed they said the media will cost about 18 bucks for the write once 1x stuff. Then I checked Tiger Direct because I knew they had some media last time I went to there wharehouse but I didn't check the price. This is what I see and it shows at 2x media Blu Ray is the same price tag as HD-DVD is twice the speed and is available now instead of the end of July like HD-DVD. I know the price I am quoting is a translation of Japaneese Yen but to be fair it cost more to import to America then it does to Japan. Then you got to factor in though it's Tiger Direct selling the Blu Ray media and they put a nice kicker onto there price tags so maybe at some online shops it's cheaper.

All 3 people who have Blu Ray writers will be really happy.

More then HD-DVD burner owners which equal 0

Blu Ray has 1 burner released and 3 different media's to choose from
HD-DVD has nothing hmmmm HD-DVD has the lead I guess

Yay for HD-DVD!
In the .... lead, where it belongs

The only recordable media I've seen in stores for HD-DVD: Memorex Made in India. Talk about complete junk? That cannot be the only choice...then again, what's the point of having discs if there's no burner/recorder (from what I've seen)??

this is not a war...it's a blowout for Blu-Ray. I went into this little format war with an open mind, with a slight bias towards HD-DVD. Mainly because I'm not a fan of Hollywood or proprietary stuff. But Blu-Ray is definitely way out in front thus far. Once HD-DVD gets its act together, with quality discs, there's no reason to think it won't be equal in terms of data storage (with focus on reliability, not just capacity).

A quick update on the format war/race. There are notebooks now on the market with writable blu-ray drives (Sony and soon, I'm sure, Panasonic). Unfortunately for HD-DVD, one of its newest releases is with Fujitsu (N6420 Lifebook)...still only a HD-DVD ROM drive. It's true even for the highest-end Qosmios (which, btw, are shifting completely from MIJ to Made in China...garbage). Pretty sad imho.

HD-DVD seems to have the better reviews when it comes to quality transcoding.

It seems like a bunch of incompetent idiots did the transcoding for blu-ray.
http://www.videohelp.com/hd

The two formats use the same video codecs .. Blu-ray has the advantage that it can use a lower compression ratio (aka higher quality video) or maintain the compression ratio & include more content.

BD-RE is cheap on newegg, especially with the free shipping promotion. Sony $14.99, TDK (with Durabis 2) 16.99. To me, these are much better deals than BD-R. Especially since I got InCD working a while back, which allows UDF 2.50 formatting (drag/drop). Sweet!

Is there a point to having HD-DVD media? I have not seen a single writer on the market yet, or is there? Or a standalone HD-DVD recorder? Maybe in Japan?

I haven't seen any HD-DVD media available anywhere here in the UK. Some online shops are selling BD-R media at around £9-10 per disc (which isn't bad considering that it's brand-spanking new technology) but none of them don't seem to be selling any HD-DVD media.

I still have a burning question though. If Blu-Ray media and drives are cheaper and more widely-available than HD-DVD media and drives, then why are all the 'experts' saying that HD-DVD will win the next generation format war?

This refers to pressed discs with pre-recorded content ie) movie/tv shows. Recordable media is a different, but potentially related market in terms of which HD media will win.