You and me both, zevia. That'd be sweet. I'd love to get a dual format burner. YEA RIGHT!!

Yea SamuriHL, my HD DVD blanks can't wait to be burned.

I don't have any blank media. At this point I'm waiting for things to get cheaper. I'm content with ripping things to my hard drive...for now. Some day I'll want to do backups like I do with DVD, but, it's currently cheaper to build a NAS than it is to back up to media.

As others have said, I don't think either format will win over the other. That being said, I definitely would prefer to see HD-DVD become the standard for the reasons listed above. The format is just much more economical and consumer friendly. @Doctor T, while it is true that on paper that the Blu-Ray format led by Sony seems to have absolute supieriority, you have to take a look at the folks who are backing HD-DVD on the non-hardware production side. Among two of the biggest backers are Microsoft and Intel. Two companies that definitely have the muscle to make a format survive, then again Toshiba is no little weakling either. Then again if we are talking about hardware production, really it is only a Sony versus Toshiba battle as the other hardware producers haven't made any significant hardware sales. I would say that the PS3 and Sony standalones easily account for 90% off all blu-ray hardware sales.

Surely more "como solutions" will appear, making the format war question obsolete as we have seen that already before (DVD-R vs. DVD+R).

I wondering if The "Quality & Reading" integrity of these "Dual Format" (HD/BR) player is the same as those as "Stand Alone" Player either HD or BR?.

Really, with the crazy sales that are going on right now with HD-DVD Players and Blu-Ray players I just don't see the purpose of a dual format drive as they are significantly more expensive. Amazon has the Toshiba A3 for less than $200 right now and the 40GB PS3 can be had for under $350 if you keep an eye out for sales. Good luck finding a dual format machine that will give you the kind of performance that those two machines will for less than $550.

Right...but talk to me in 6 months. The fact is, penetration rates for either format, heck, BOTH FORMATS COMBINE is minuscule at this point. By the time the mainstream audience gets around to buying, dual format players will be the norm at under 300 USD.

I have both formats. Love them both but prefer BR DVD on my PS3. Picture quality is the same and all of this depends on the movie and how it was made as well as the production of the disk to the correct format. Some are only DVD quality and some are outstanding and eye popping. The reason I prefer the PS3 is that it is faster and more convienient to mount and use. It sits upright next to my TV and the A2 has to be flat/maybe. Very large footprint. BR movies can be had for $9.99 on sale at Frys from time to time as well as other sites. Still waiting for a great HD sale/need disks man to feed my A2. LOL

my PC is ready for both, but i would preffer for HD-DVD to take the edge.

That's going to be tough since Blu-Ray has really been struggling with keeping costs on hardware/disc production down. A lot of it depends on what happens this coming year. Blu-Ray has some headache's/growing pains to deal with over the addition of special features and the whole V1.0, V1.1 and V2.0 spec issue. Everyone is claiming that the only difference will be special features but I would be surprised if there weren't some conventional playback issues on at least a handful of titles. The other thing is what certain movie studios decide to do in 2008, there is at least some credible evidence that Disney and affiliates could move to dual format sometime in '08 (they have approved production specs for triple layer HD-DVD). If Warner Bros. keeps up the dual format approach (very likely) and if Fox and Disney both go dual format then we could definitely see HD-DVD make some great strides next year.

I don't think it'll be tough at all to get a dual format player down to 300 USD. The reason? They'll BOTH lose if they don't. Consumers are NOT going to adopt a dual format strategy where they're forced to buy two players. Even in your best case scenario where Fox and Disney go dual format, you still have Paramount and Sony as single format studios. If people are forced to choose between Sony movies and Paramount movies they're likely to say screw it and choose neither. After all, why invest in the expense of HD equipment and higher priced movies if they can't play ALL the movies on one machine? It's one thing for us enthusiasts to buy two players, but, to expect Average Joe to do so....not going to happen. What I'm saying is that if Blu-ray is to survive, they will be FORCED to drop their player prices and cooperate with getting a dual format player down to a reasonable price. Then the format war will be over for consumers.

BTW, 3 layer for HD-DVD will only be available for limited usage, and its still not clear if current devices will be able to read the triple-layered HD-DVDs at all.

Quite true. If they work in existing players, great....but I'd not get my hopes up.

From reading info on www.blueraydisc.com it would seem the hardware and movie Studio's are in the Blu-ray camp ATM. Also the different versions of Blu-ray 1.1 and 2.0 are for PIP (Picture in Picture) and on line stuff so if you don't use it like me it seems irrelevant. As one reviewer said it seems like the harware manufactures are baiting the early buyers of Blu-ray to go out and buy another better new and improved player.

They used some dirty pool in the studio support stats there though. They conveniently listed the major companies AND their affiliates for Blu-Ray but only listed the major movie studios for HD-DVD support. Paramount includes:

Paramount Pictures
Dreamworks
Dreamworks Animation
MTV Networks (at least their home video releases)
Nickelodeon
Comedy Central (at least their home video releases)
PBS (at least their home video releases)
Showtime (at least their home video releases)
CBS (at least their home video releases)

Universal Studios includes:

Universal Studios
Focus Features
Rogue Pictures
Universal Animation Studios

It should also be noted that MGM's entire library prior to 1994 (in otherwords all of the MGM classics) are in fact owned by Warner Bros. which is well known for supporting both high def formats. So it's only the late MGM films that are Blu-Ray exclusive.

Incidentally you can verify my info by checking out each of the studios bios at Wikipedia.

I'm not saying that Blu-Ray doesn't currently have the edge in movie studio support, I'm just saying that it isn't as horribly skewed as the Blu-Ray website makes it out to be.

As for hardware support they currently list LG and Samsung as exclusively supporting the Blu-Ray format but we all know that they have both released dual format players (both for PC and standalone) so they should be listed under HD-DVD as well as Blu-Ray.

BluRay has always been about selling hardware. Both the manufacturing hardware and the consumer hardware. Most of the hardware makers listed are also the same ones who make millions off of re-tooling factories for production of discs, players and drives, not to mention selling players and drives to consumers. HD-DVD did not require all new factories and hardware, and so was less attractive to those companies.

Agree that the info is bias as one would expect from a Blu-ray website.
Sad part is the studios are siding with either company and forcing the consumer to choose what movies they can or can't watch in High Def. If the studios stayed nuteral and produced both formats it wouldn't take long to find out which format would win the race. HD-DVD I suspect as Sony is just too expensive.

A Blu-ray site providing "information" on itself falls into the "intentional fallacy" category--it's invalid unless it's backed up by hard facts from several disinterested third parties.

I'm glad to see this thread is a very balanced discussion, really more leaning toward "neither." I've read a little here and there elsewhere, and I've seen enough articles on "Blu-ray winning" that seem too much fluff and not enough fact that it makes me want to puke. I look at who's behind Blu-ray (Sony) and for me that's "'Nuff said."

Yeah, even though I am heavily biased towards HD-DVD I concur that arguments of either format winning at this point is a bunch of crap. DVD still holds the overwhelming majority of hardware and movie sales and getting people to upgrade is the real challenge. So with movie studios refusing to budge (although a couple of them might go dual format in the next year) it all comes down to which one can get it's hardware mass marketed to the public for the cheapest.

Incidentally here is a new approach. I am by no means saying that these stats are the gospel truth but it might be a better indicator than the stats from those sites that seem to be skewed to whatever side they want. The following represents the top sellers from amazon.com. For electronics they currently have the Toshiba A3 at #7 in their top 100 of any electronic sales, The Toshiba A30 currently ranks #24 and the Toshiba A35 currently ranks at #95. Now it should be noted that these are updated hourly but I have been watching these for the last couple of days and the A3 has consistently occupied a place within the top 10 and the other two have all remained within the top 100 at any given point in time. It is interesting to note that at no time has a standalone Blu-Ray unit ranked anywhere in the top 100 electronic sales, yet all 3 of the current gen Toshiba HD-DVD players have always managed to occupy a spot somewhere in the top 100. Of course this is only amazon.com and this is only monitoring for a few days but I intend to keep an eye on it for the next few weeks to see if these sorts of trends hold. Once again, not saying that this definitely proves a point but over time this might be a bit more accurate than random sales figures from some research site. To be fair to blu-ray though the PS3 has remained in the top 100 in videogame sales. With the 80GB version currently occupying the #9 slot and the 40GB version occupying the #18 slot. Once again though it is difficult to tell how many of these people are truly taking advantage of the PS3's blu-ray player.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers...SA7WX796AW6V3G

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers...SA7WX796AW6V3G