Blu Ray over/under $

Hi Ears. Certainly not end of story! I was at CES and saw all of the demos. What you are saying is NOT the true picture of reality. Only a small piece.

Also,the larger consortium of players might easily create problems and already has! HP forced blu-ray to change their standards by threatening to leave-so Sony had to relent on an issue they said they would never change to keep HP in the game. That is but one example. Besides, all of the hardware manufacturers are now COMPETITORS with each other. The losers could VERY EASILY start making hd-dvd players for instance. The BR camp has too many mouths to feed and not everyone is gonna win. I still think pricepoints and title availability will win the day. The only X factor out there is the whole PS3 and XBOX factor. I saw the PS3 demos- they are freaky good, especially in those 5.1 surround moving chair thingees. Wow.

Rysa...if you visit the XBOX 360forum at AVS...you can see exactly how little they seem to care about the add on....but you may have to look a page or two back in that forum to even find the thread on the announced add on.
My son owns an XBOX 360 and I had to send it in with a code after 6 hours because it was rushed to market just like the HD players are going to be.

Most seem to feel scammed by MS....with the vast majority not even interested in the add on.

The ps3 is a true "Trojan Horse" because it will be included on every player and PS is far bigger than Xbox as far as units sold goes and popularity.

Advantage = SonyB/R. imo

I will most likely be buying the Pioneer Elite Blu Ray player that took best in show.

I agree that Play Station three rocks- I saw it myself. It gives a superior gaming experience than xbox 360 IMO as a truely disinterested third party. PS3 is a better product and obviously is a key Sony/Blu Ray advantage.

Still, I think the HD-DVD/blu-Ray issue is not so easy to determine a winner. With a split on movie titles and cheaper price points on movies and players, HD-DVD cannot be counted out easily. Lets see what happens...

Just back from CES myself, saw no apparent quality difference between hd-bluray. However anybody I talked to promoting hd-dvd was very defensive sounding while the blu-ray folks said "done-deal, no contest". There are significant mass-storage advantages to blu-ray. But MOST IMPORTANT I feel is the publics acceptanceof a neat sounding word like Blu-Ray, much better than trying to say HD-DVD.....This simple name of a format thing is much ignored...Try saying SACD to a record store clerk and their eyes glaze over, DVD-Audio was better but still stupid, could have been called cd-plus or something and gone over much better as an audio format, just my 2cents worth, Mike.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6142137.html

It looks as if XBOX is saying if HD fails...they will then have add on B/R players.
Some of the Xbox 360 owners had said that MS was probably hedging there bets and/or not having full faith in HD....looks like they were right.