It wasn't a matter of switching sides. HD DVD lost me exclusively in July when they failed to get Disney to even consider switching. I couldn't sit on the sidelines forever waiting for a miracle. Once I saw what HD could look like, I wanted all my movies in HD and at that point the market was split fairly evenly. Paramount's decision gave hope that HD DVD could win, but, what's happened since then? Cheap players, EXPENSIVE discs. (Don't even give me this crap about Blu-ray costing more...if you look at the average price of discs between the formats, HD DVD discs cost quite a bit more than Blu-ray due to the combo disc fiasco.) Meanwhile Blu-ray kept pumping out the sales and 2 for 1 deals. HD DVD did that once in a while, but, when you have more titles and do it more often, well, I ended up with a huge library of Blu-ray discs that I only paid for half of. Thanks, Blu-ray! You talk about rebuying all your old movies again, but, that's not really necessary. It's moving forward that counts. Keep your old movies and upscale them. That's kuel. Good luck getting a lot of the new movies in HD DVD, however. And HD is where it's at IMO. I won't go back to SD...no way.

You're not alone, many of my friends doesn't have HDTV yet let alone blu-ray or hd dvd player. But many of my other friends have more than I/we do.

And check this out: The Greatest Show on Earth!

As I said, a LOT of the Blu-rays I own I didn't have to pay for thanks to Amazon's 2 for 1 deals. So I picked up a bunch of new movies and grabbed some old ones that I had no intention of rebuying anyway. Is that not a win win situation? And I think once we go digital tv in the US, more people will embrace HD because too many people mistake digital to mean HD so they'll go out and buy an HD tv so they're "ready for the switch". Once that happens they'll be looking for HD content. A lot of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for this silly war to be over. Who wants to buy into the "wrong" format? Once a CLEAR winner is established, and it's MO that Blu has done that, consumers will start buying into HD.

Seating is to small. They will be deaf in 2 years

yeah but then again i know people that say i have to get a new TV or use government money to buy the converter so they can still use their old TV's to watch the same commercials,same shows,same movies, etc......Most are not happy about that.

And are those people on Sat or Cable? Cause if so, then there's nothing to see here. This transition is the most misunderstood nonsense I've ever seen. The ONLY way you'd need to buy a converter is if you're still watching OTA broadcasts. Yet people don't seem to get that.

Some have antennas on their roofs. One friend of mine just finally bought a DVD player 2 years ago

You city guys must not believe there are people living in the sticks and don't want Sat They are happy with what they get from roof top antennas.

Their kids don't play game consoles. They help on the farm.

The intend of having posted the information about F/W upgrade is not that this is the only place provides this information, but as you guys whole heartedly defend your Blu-Ray format and get the owner of HD player depressed about having the war is all over we the owners of HD also have a point that these type activities (updated Firmware) from the Manufacturer of HD players shows the fight still on and no winner have be defined yet. So please give us (HD owners) little chance to move on.

Who the hell are you calling a city guy?!?!?!? As I sit here and look out my window I have woods across the street, my uncle's house about 1000 yards off the left side, and my neighbor's house across the dirt road lying adjacent to my property. I know all about OTA tv as that's all I had when growing up in the next town over. I had to get my parents sat when I was in college because cable said they'd never go down their road because there wasn't enough people on it. (The did about 6 years later, and only cause they needed some place to run a trunk line through town for cable modem...) I thought the whole rooftop antenna thing sucked, personally. Where I live (50 miles from both major cities I live near...smack dab in the middle) the signal tends to suck. I feel bad for anyone in the sticks using an antenna.

lol ok ok your no city guy.

Your antenna must suck cause i visit a friend that lives 100 miles from me and he can get the stations here. He can also get ones from another city the same distance. Maybe they make them better now or more power at the stations?

I just was wanting everyone to notice not all people have or want HD or digital for that fact and when they go into a grocery store all that food didn't come from boxes

Edit:
When i drive 125 miles both ways to get my daughter.........there are more houses with antennas than Sat dishes. At least from what i've noticed.

The problem is we live close to the coast and as such we're sort of in this vally from hell. Add to it that we're surrounded by trees, and, well, no signal gets down here very well. My house is one of the few in town that gets NO cell phone signal except on weird weather days. Now with HD signals being broadcast OTA, I'd not get any picture rather than the snowy one we used to get when we had an antenna. (This house got cable probably 15 years ago so it had it earlier than my parent's house. Both houses were on antenna when I was a kid.) The HD signals they broadcast now are either all good or all off. I'm quite sure mine would be all off.

As for food, I'm personally well aware of where it comes from. My daughter hates that fact, but, I love it. There are a few farms in the area and it's great.

Well back to HD-DVD and Blu-ray........i just hate being dictated by movie companies as to what i can or cannot buy. What happened to democracy? If they had any brains they would put movies out in both formats and let the public have a choice.

@SamuriHL i don't even have a penny in my HD-DVD player or movies. Sears messed up my order so bad they gave it to me for free. I got the 2 free ones in the box and need to mail off for my free 5. So i'm really not for either but wish they would leave it to us to choose out of at least the 2 formats.

Who knows in the future they will dictate as another format.......it's very possible.

The problem is, it's too late for this conversation about consumer choice. In the beginning I said that all studios needed to release on both formats and let the consumer choose what they wanted. That didn't happen. Now we're at a point where BOTH formats could lose if they're not careful. People are waiting for the war to be over, but, just as many are happy with upscaling their DVD's. The only way for HD to compete is to have ALL studio support behind one format and then try to change consumer attitudes that upscaling DVD's is "good enough." If this war drags on any longer the consumers that would be willing to buy into HD are going to say forget it and just ignore both HD formats. HD could remain a niche product which is fine and all, but, it keeps prices higher. Look at laserdisc. So what *I* want to see is one format win, and then Disney go out there and educate its consumers as ot why HD is the way to go. HD DVD at this point just needs to give it up. Do I agree that consumer choice is the best solution? Of course, but, then again we should never have had 2 HD formats on the market in the first place. Greed is what caused that situation. It was a fight over royalties. Ridiculous.

yeah I'm getting to old for this crap anyway. I'm staying with what i have. I may purchase new releases in HD-DVD but i will still buy regular DVD's too.

Stay tune Bob this thing is far from over and no one or two studios alone have the final say so on this war of format. Both format owners have their own wishful thinking but only time will tell which one will prevail.

TCAS as you can tell and im just guessing but 90% of the people here in this thread that are for Blu-ray have HD-DVD players also

You and i are the minority

True because we love the movies and not the format.

Boys want Transformers (HD DVD) -- check!
Wife wants Ratatouille (Blu-ray) -- check!
I want this and that -- check!

I have those. Awesome movies. The thing is, I want movies in the best quality I can get them. To say there's no difference at all between Cars on DVD and Cars on Blu-ray is to show extreme ignorance. So format MATTERS to the goal of loving movies. This is also why I went through the trouble of hooking up analog audio to my HTPC so I could get the best sound I can get with my current audio receiver. In any case, DVD vs Blu-ray is not a close match for a lot of movies. Maybe some will look pretty good on an upscaled DVD, but, a majority will look better on Blu-ray. The differences between Blu-ray and HD DVD aren't even worth discussing as they're so close.

Sam why would you do that? Get a good picture and not the sound to go with it? I would rather have regular DVD's and optical audio than HD and crappy audio.

I'm guessing there are a lot of people here the same way though.

I have good sound, I just don't have HDMI on my receiver. Nor do I have 400 bucks to drop on one that provides that ability. The analog sound gives me LPCM uncompressed audio instead of simple DD or DTS. So, the quality of sound I have is actually quite good because it bypasses my receiver's decoding completely. This way PowerDVD decodes whatever HD audio track there is (TrueHD, LPCM, DD+, whatever) into an uncompressed channel for each of the 5.1 channels I have and sends it to each one directly. No processing by the receiver at all and it allows PowerDVD to mix in custom "click" sounds in the menus and stuff. If I had HDMI it wouldn't do me any good on the HTPC because PowerDVD doesn't support HD audio over HDMI yet. It'd be nice for the PS3, but, that's only for Blu-ray. So, this is the best solution I have right now. I know, people see "analog" and think "OMG, stereo quality crap sound!" But, in reality nothing could be further from the truth.