both have much to recommend them. the 7 free movies with the players have been a great bonus on hd-dvd... plenty of retailers have 3 for price of 2 movies, >> blu-ray seldom bother to market in this way. the menu on hd-dvd is better, with more extras usually.

colin minhinnick, plymouth , devon

Wake up people! Blu-Ray will be the winning format!! Toshiba HD-DVD have nothing more to offer especially after cancelling their HD-DVD show! BLU-RAY IS THE FUTURE!!!!!!!! HD-DVD sounds oldschool!

Reec7e, Manchester, UK

I bought an Xbox 360 Elite last year and for Christmas my wife bought me the add on HD DVD Player,I found the films are excellent and very crisp and clear and the sounds are also excellent.
The promotion of five free DVDs`s is also a very good idea to get you started, People can get to experience the quality of HD DVD.
I myself would recommed HD DVD due value and price.

Alex Mac, BURY LANCASHIRE, England

I'm one of those that is still waiting and watching. Check out Amazon sales of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. They are keeping a running tab on movie order sales in numbers and graphs, updating every 10 minutes. It appears HD leads 4 to 1! http://charts.highdefdigest.com/history.aspx

JW, Redondo Beach, CA

Hey dumb dumbs go to future shop/best buy they are both giving away bundled HD DVD's hello there's a reason for that HD DVD is 2 months from being dead...way to go SONY it's about time somebody stepped up and had the balls to rule the DVD market! And in case you still don't trust me the damn HD DVD players are $100 bucks give me a break.Any day now SONY will buy out Toshiba's HD DVD.SONY can't afford another flop.RE- plazma beta...

Mike, Georgetown, Ontario

I own a HD DVD player and currently own 7 HD DVD Movies, several of my friends own PS3's, as of now none have bought a BluRay Disk, in fact none have even bought any games, they are playing the Demo disks from the Magazines. Given the choice consumers are buying HD DVD players and movies, the fact that Sony is a media giant and wants the world to believe it has Won the format war! we cannot escape, but the fact is as a consumer I've voted with my wallet, and HD DVD has won. If Disney and other studios are refusing to release their movies on HD DVD this just means that they will loose out in their profits as I won't be spending my money buying thier films on Bluray, and counting PS3 sales in the player vs Player sales is just another attempt to baffle the masses into thinking Bluray is winning, well it's not, as a consumer I'm on the front line and from here it looks like HD DVD is pulling away.

Chris, Cardiff, Wales

I think the only winner in the HD Player game will be CH-DVD.

Dubbed CH-DVD (China High Definition DVD), the new high-def DVD has been developed by the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center (OMNERC), a laboratory inside the Tsinghua University, in collaboration with other research institutes and manufacturing enterprises at home and abroad.

The relationship between Toshiba’s HD DVD and the CH-DVD is very close, since the latter is designed based on the HD DVD specifications, but also includes Chinese intellectual property. CHDA will play a leadership role in the promotion of CH-DVD, and will make a big push to launch CH-DVD player into the Chinese market in 2008.

The CH-DVD boasts with advanced copy-protection features (piracy being one of China’s greatest plagues), which should effectively prevent the spreading of pirated discs.

Point:
HD DVD and CH DVD are compatible, which means HD DVD players (with additional software) can read CH DVD, and vice versa

rod, Brampton, CANADA

Long term reliability of Blu-ray players is another concern. The gap between the disc surface and its blue laser pick-up is only 0.1mm, HDDVD is 0.6mm!

JT , Glendale, CA

I find it ironic that the HD-DVD people tout the ability to use existing fabrication lines as an advantage. The big issue with studios is the ability to copy-protect the content. Forcing pirate DVD operations to switch to a new fabrication equipment would be an advantage for Blu-Ray. Slowing down the pirates for a while would be a net plus for the studios even when they factor in their new equipment.

Paul, New York, NY, USA

The reality is that Warner made a choice based on disk sales. It's been widely reported for some time now that Blu-Ray outsells HDDVD 2-1 in actual disk sales. Warner does not care how many players Toshiba and Microsoft sell... they care how many movies they will sell. HDDVD may sell more stand-alone players, but this has not translated into movie sales. And studios make their money on movie sales.

Bill, Spokane, Washington

There is no install base for Blue Ray to succeed. The PS3 is still lagging in last place, and after the holiday season there are more HD DVD players stand alone than Blue Ray players in homes. What we will now have is Standard DVD retaining the most supported format and Hi Def movies just a consumer luxory. This will put Downloadinable movies into the mainstream since all downloadable movies will have the option of HD (All beit windows media format 720p) which you can download now even Sony's and Disney's studios movies, even on the rival MS Xbox 360. Maybe this is a foresight by Warner Bros/Time Warner. It made no sense to switch as they did as HD DVD was leading is sales of movies and players. Anyone reading this can see if you walk into any computer or electronic store, there are mountains of the PS3 sitting on shelves, even as you walk in the door at Best Buy

Steven Robinson, Neptune City, USA

Unlike the Beta .vs. VHS battle, where Beta clearly had the better sound and image quality, the ultimate qualty and technical differences between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are much less of an issue for consumers. Thus it almost doesn't matter who "wins" this one. Although, in fact, maybe Blu-Ray is technically more elegant.

John, Nottingham, UK

IPTV is far away...may be 10 to 15 years from hear. The internet BW isn't enough, remember the cable internet is ok right now, but what happen if everybody in their neighbourhood decide to see a movie in HD at the same time, Internet BW is divided between all...we need to wait for internet2.

klonfer, Miami, USA/Fl

Having Microsoft as a supporter can help HD-DVD prevail? The last time I checked, Microsoft didn't release movies. I agree with Barry: the format with the most titles available will prevail. Microsoft's interest in this format war is not to promote HD-DVD as a viable HD media source. It's interest lies in keeping this format war going as long as possible. The longer the format war goes on, the more Microsoft can push it's online downloadable content. That's what they want: the demise of the optcal disc system. They've said it themselves.

As far as Kyle's comments on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD picture and sound, most of the releases that are being produced for both media formats have the identical video encode. As far as audio, Blu-Ray has consistantly offered true uncompressed HD audio which has been lacking in a lot of HD-DVD titles.

I think that both formats are more than adequate to push us into the HD era. Will either one beat out DVD though? That's the real format war yet to come

Ralph, Waterbury, CT, USA

Microsoft is smart...Why Xbox 360 has not HD DVD integrated like PS3?...is very smart idea no?...

klonfer, Miami, USA/Fl

Red is better than Blue! Don't give up on HD DVD. Its what blue ray wants. HD DVD Better picture, better sound.

kyle, portage la prairie,

It doesn't matter who wins. The winner holds 100% of nothing.

Daedalus, Boston, Ma., USA

The world of technology is littered with really brilliant innovations that failed in the marketplace. Technically Beta Max is the best video technology. It lost - why? VHS had all the movies. The same applies to DVD technology. What is best technically is totally irrelevant (well almost) it is who has the movies - increasingly it looks like Bu-ray.

Barry Mellish, Bromley, UK

The general problem with Blu-Ray is that the technology used in it is less conventional than that of the HD-DVD. On a HD movie range they stand on the same line, but for example in the gaming world, the Blu-Ray has been criticized due to the lack of people able to program games to be supported by the format.
This might prove critical in the later phases of the dispute.

Juri, Espoo, Finland

Betting too much on the storage capacity ? A simple scratch swallows the whole fun ....freezing ...skipping ...The point is how much data you want to loose in one shot !
We are yet to see how these high density formats are going to perform when mass produced......Will they offer 4 movies in new format for the price of one disc ? and How much extra we are going to see and feel compared to the regular DVD content? The consumers will decide based on price-performance despite other forces.

Naren, Missisauga, Canada

What so many of you don't understand is that technology gets cheaper everyday. All the while this whole "fight" has been progressing, the cost of manufacturing Blu-Ray discs has been dropping, and continues to do so. Of course, the same can be said for HD-DVD, but there comes a point where Blu-Ray will be cheap enough that even though HD-DVD will remain cheaper, in retrospect Blu-Ray's features will greatly outweigh the costs.

By the time this is all over, Blu-Ray will be cheaper to manufacture than HD-DVD is to manufacture right now.

Bill Puckering, Surrey, BC,

i have HD IPTV here in canada with SaskTel. You can get it with a PVR.

Graison, saskatoon, canada

Mike, Lorton,

Please learn how to spell fibre.

Mike, Birmingham, UK

They need to get this non-sense wrapped up! HI Def is here and they want to argue the format for a year while the consumer continues to wait. If HD DVD is a cheaper format and can deliver the same quality as Blu Ray for less money then what's the argument? Is it really because (Sony) Play Station 3 jumped the gun with Blu Ray!

D. Lewis, Jeffersonville, Indiana

Some countries like Switzerland, Germany and France have already Internet-Connection up to 25 Megabit. So, IP-TV is a possibility. In Switzerland they already offer IP-TV.
I'm not going to switch to Blue-ray and dumb my DVD's I already own. It is all about content and lots of old classics or documentaries are just fine with the old DVD format up to 8 GB.

Guenter, Holualoa, USA?HI

Blu Ray will win out because it has the cooler name. As a brand its got a handle which separates it out as the future.

As far as IPTV is concerned, going back to wired telly is backwards. Try fitting 4.5Gb an hour down wires to millions of viewers around the world over the Internet. I don't understand how anyone thinks this is going to happen. It'll end up being ISP provided content, dedicated, i.e. cable TV.

Luke, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

HD-IPTV is minimum 10 years away. There is neither the infrastructure capable of handling the large amounts of data quickly and cheaply or the incentive to move away from physical media for watching a movie that there was with music.

Arron Clements, Coventry, UK

HD-DVD will be more of a mainstream solution, because it provides everything that is needed to play a full length movie with high quality surround sound. Blue ray cost too much and doesn't provide and better picture or sound quality, because they both use the same standards. With the added disc capactiy you might be able to put 2 movies on a disc instead of one or maybe far more special features, but I don't see how this is a large benefit. Also, IPTV will not provide the same level of quality until a large portion of the population has at least 20 Mbps of dedicated and reliable bandwidth going to their home for each show being played. Many years in the future famillies may have that the needed bandwidth in their home to play these movies, but HD DVD will then have lived out its useful life anyways. HD DVD can actually provide either 32 Mbps or 74 Mbps depending on the hardware. Fiber to the home doesn't usually provide more than 15 Mbps.

Mike, Lorton,

As some-one who works in the hi-end audio/video buisness. the blu-ray format is the better of the two. none of the hi-end manufacturers have adopted to either format except for one company which will be releasing its product late febuary early march. and this company has chosen to go with blu-ray. In short, it is best for a format to win and it is better for the higher quality format to win. and as to vhs and beta-max, the deciding factor for that was the pron industry they adopted the vhs which drove beta-max out of the water.

kyle, Hartford, CT

Mark, Weymouth. You say "Blu-ray is the winner, and rightly so, as it's the superior format in every way, when compared to HD DVD. "

Not true, the image and audio specifications are the SAME.

Blu-ray has more storage capacity, HD-DVD has vastly better interactive options and is cheaper to produce and license.

Clivex, Bristol,

HD DVD was doomed from the beginning. Little support from studios, unless they were offered large amounts of money, and a smaller disc space. Blu-ray was outselling HD DVD 2 to 1. Also manufacturers of HD Dvd players weren't making much profit because of all the price cuts they had to do due to the inexpensive Korean HD Dvd players that were imported.

Eddie, San Diego,

BR will fail!
The whole reason for HD DVD was interactive element. The Heroes box set for instance, with the u control option. I can watch the first to seasons of lost in HD on demand from cable TV for free. Why pay for the BR disc with much the same content.

Moon, Birmingham,

VHS didn't win by having the cheaper players, VHS won because it was first with feature length films and the availability of adult content.

Whatever the merits of each format, this format has had nothing to do with the consumer.

IP TV is a great idea, but where is the bandwith to stream a full HD movie?

Adie, Coventry,

As A A/V custom installer I would like to point out one thing this is all about greed. If sony is able to win they can charge whatever they feel like for Blue Ray discs, and Players. I do agree that in order for this to be a format that people use you have to have one format not two or three or five. I love showing customers High Definition by this I mean True High Def. 1080p and listening to High Def. audio formats sounds and looks awesome so I hope these two camps join forces and bring the price to the middle call it HD-RAY and lets all enjoy this content.

Magical Home Theaters, Fort Myers, FL

Microsoft do not want either format to win. They only supported HD-DVD as they knew it was failing to drag the format war on. Microsoft then wanted to introduce digital downloads when consumers were sick of a format war so everyone would support them. They do not care who wins and maysimply pull away from the ailing HDDVD . BluRay will obviously win.

Robbie, Manchester,

It surely is game over for HD DVD,

Blu-ray is the winner, and rightly so, as it's the superior format in every way, when compared to HD DVD.

I don't think HD downloads are close, the bandwidth required means fibre-optic to the home is needed, and this is simply inpractical in the UK. Bearing in mind Blu-ray movies are 50GB in size, that would take days, if not weeks to download on most peoples internet connections. Who wants to wait that long before you get to watch your movie!!

Mark, Weymouth, Dorset

All HD-DVD has to do to win the battle is produce a player for the equivalent of under £100 and the battle will be over, to win the battle they need to get a critical mass of machines into homes fast and dropping the price is the way to do it. That is how VHS won the battle with Betamax.

Stephen, St. Ives, England

Well That's Microsoft's line - since Microsoft is trying to push it's DRMed IPTV media with which it hopes to monopolise the home theatre market. However it is not even remotely close to reality since current bandwidth is insufficient for this. Microsoft's only chance was that having two conflicting HD formats would keep customers from adopting HD players until Internet bandwidth increased enough to make Microsoft's IPTV feasible. This hope has completely dried up now.

SM, Cambridge,

I don't think the consumers will decide on this one....Hollywood and the big corporations will.

Benny F., Mpls/St.Paul, MN

HD is Dead and Gone .. Blu-Ray is a much more catchy name ..

Niklas, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Who says Blu-ray will succeed even if HD-DVD dissapears. HD IPTV sounds more like the future to me.

Chris, Twickenham, Middlesex

BR makes sense. Same quality as HD-DVD but with a potential storage of 200GB, whereas HD-DVD has a potential storage limit of 51GB.
Why would anyone opt for the smaller of two storage mediums?

Phill , The Wirral, England