[<^..^>Smokey Joe]

I think this battle is actually holding back the progression of Hi Def especially in Non US countries, the consumer who remembers the VHS v Beta is seeing no clear winner and waiting. New consumers are going to be won by marketing, good deals, ie PS3 and Xbox being the underpin to cheap format players before buying a dedicated player.

The major issue in waiting is that it will drag on for a long time, the players being big and powerful can afford to drag it out, lose money just to get market penetration.

The consumer to some degree is being fooled into thinking one is better than the other just by how much storage space it can handle. The reality is the larger of the 2, Blueray is sticking to mpeg2 as a compression. Where as HD-DVD is using VC1 or Mpeg4 compression. The result of these compression types is that VC1 and Mpeg4 is that the need only half the space as mepeg2.

Does that make it better? You bet!
Because HD-DVD storage is greater than half of Blurray the HD-DVD only has to be 1% less compressed to have less compression artifacts. Since the difference is far greater that there is a clear viewable difference in quality.

The better compression actually can have rollon effects right along the video chain and DTV broadcasts. Better bandwidth usage all round, which is the quality limter in the real world.

Who will win though?
The main issue here is that the average consumer is confused, those consumers don't frequent these websites like this one but head to the retail store looking for the best deal. Won over by price and marketing, which doesn't really equate to quality.

Once upon a time the consumer had 2 inputs to make a TV go, power and RF.

Now we have, RF, composite, svideo, RGB, DVI, component, HDMI 1.1 1.2 1.3, then have 2 or 3 of these and you can 7 or more different connects with multibles, add terms 720p, 1080i , 1080p, widescreen, 16:9 1.78:1, 2.35:1, plasma, LCD, Lcos, projectors...and the list goes on.

When I talk to people at work over coffee breaks about all this and quiery them on their knowledge they list portions of all of the above with relationships that are completely wrong....why? Marketing hype, sales pitch call it what you like.

These people who are confused are the ones that you could call brighter than the average spark too, being Professors of their respective fields.

For me there is 1 clear leader, it just that it has nothing to do with the medium that it is packaged on.