So they knowingly put out inferior quality? Sony and others were simply hoping that HD DVD would not come out the way it did. Remember the worse looking titles have come from Sony. They were hoping to simply get by with SL25/MPEG2 and no one would complain. Then they could take their sweet time with BD50 as there would be no competition. HD DVD came out and became the benchmark. This became a huge problem for Blu Ray as it's precisely why we're seeing the backlash. For majority of the titles they're stuck with SL25 until BD50 becomes mainstream reality but no one has any idea when that maybe. Hell, we wanted the R520 to be a 24 pipe monster but it didn't work out that way did it? What we want and what is economically feasible can vary greatly. Getting stuff running under lab conditions vs. high yields of hundreds of million discs is very different. There is a chance that BD50 is a bit more than they can chew and it might take a few years to get to an acceptable level. BR didn't start up recently. They have been working on it for a few years now. To have 0 BD50 titles out is quite alarming and clearly demonstartes a problem with the media. I'm seriously hoping it's not long term because it would be cool to see majority of the titles on BD50 from studios that don't support HD DVD. That way I'm not limited in my selection but I certainly will not buy a BD25 Mpeg2 title as it tells studios to we're willing to accept that. Shape up or ship out, that's my message to the BR camp. My money is to be earned, not taken. And I'm easy to please!
It is not an issue of having difficulty in getting BD50 to work out of the lab, the issue is that BD media manufacture requires complete retooling whereas HD-DVD media manufacture can make use of HD-DVD manufacturing plant since it is based on DVD technology. This is the one and only advantage that HD-DVD has over BR. As for multiple layers, BD can do more than HD-DVD because of it's thinner cover layer, 200GB disks have been tested and demonstrated, so technically dual layer BD is not a problem.
What you have not is a shortage of BD50 media because media manufacturers have tooled up for BD25 first. This disadvantage will disappear for good in a few months.
The media companies know this. H.264 is a superior format to VC1 in terms of fidelity, and also standards compliance, and the media companies know this. The media companies certainly know a lot more about these issues than you or me, and I would suggest that this is why the media companies are prepared to wait a little and go for BD25 and MPEG2 in the interim.
Despite the rather emphatic title of this thread, I think this latest push by the HD-DVD camp to claim that they are winning is a desperate attempt to get in the FUD while it still can. HD-DVD has already lost the HD war in my opinion. Toshiba needed to get more than NEC and Sanyo on board to even have a slight chance of remaining in the game.
Millions of PS3s will have BD drives in them.
In UK anyway, some Sony Vaio high end laptops with BD drives have already appeared on sale - Misco is a major UK IT retailer:
http://www.misco.co.uk/productinfor...4MB/ 200GB/ Win Media Center/ Notebook PC.htm
Some PC component suppliers are already selling Bluray bare drives and media.
http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=351 It is more difficult to get hold of HD-DVD add on drives.
Few big IT retailers outlets seem to sell the HD-DVD equipped Toshiba equipped Qosmio G30-163 (this is a non-IT store that does).
http://www.johnlewis.com/Shopping/Product.aspx?Type=SKU&ID=230306723&source=14798 So there you have it.
The retailers seem to have already decided that Bluray has won and the big outlets seem be reluctant to sell HD-DVD equipment, and with every day that passes, HD-DVD's early advantages are being whittled away.
