Sorry, I have to disagree. I dont like the idea of Blu Ray. While I love the capacity, this is BetaMax all over again. This is +R/-R all over again as well. The best compromise for consumers would be the companies involved on both sides to incorporate the competitors format with their own inclusion. Otherwise, the amount of content available will decide the winner and not the consumer.

Look at Minidisc. While a nice idea, there just wasnt enough content to influence consumers to adopt the technology. The nice thing about DVD players is that when I buy a DVD, I dont have to look and see if that disc is supported by my player. I see the DVD logo and I know. Now consumers will be purchasing wrong versions for wrong players and you just know there is no way in hell Best Buy will take back an opened HD-DVD.

Confusion is the worst thing for consumers when it comes to business.

You're right, except that Blu-Ray is here to stay, Sony got it out early enough that early adopters knew what was going on. It's not Betamax all over, because Sony learned that lesson, I think. Expensively.
Even so, HD-DVD 1.0 isn't ready to roll now, while Blu-Ray is.

I guess I prefer the HD-DVD specs because of the inclusion H264 and HE-AAC. Im not sure if Blu Ray has supports either (I am assuming not.) H264 is definitely nice and should be welcomed more with open arms than Wm9 (not saying WM9 isnt good but I just dont think Hollywood wants MS' hands in their cookie jar.)

Ahhh....but Hollywood DOES want Microsoft's hands in their cookie jar. That's the problem, benefit, or point. Microsoft has very clearly stated their position early on regarding DRM, Microsoft is willing to share, Microsoft wants to deliver it all.
The irony is that I remember so damn clearly when Rob Glaser left M$ to start Progressive. The first tool to author audio for Progressive/REAL was Sound Forge. Early adopter. Bill Gates apparently told Rob Glaser that no one would ever want to stream media. Now, Microsoft not only wants to stream, but also deliver all media formats. Face it, they've done the best job overall, proven support, have a delivery, authoring, and archiving mechanism second to none whether we like it or not.
Hollywood at many levels, love Microsoft because of DRM. With MGM and Sony merging, it could be intimated that I have some inside knowledge there, and without breaking an NDA....think about who the power players in Hollywood are.....And what they're supporting ALREADY.

Regardless of what side of the fence you're on regarding Microsoft, their WM9 codec is rather spectacular. The 1920x1080 and 1280x720 HiDef stuff on their web site looks amazing and it's encoded at less than standard DVD bitrates. By just encoding WM9 and releasing DVD players with WM9 chips, we could have HiDef material available using standard DVD media. I'm all for it. The problem with MP4 is that there are already about 100 flavors of it.

John

There may be many flavors of MP4 but they are mpeg-4 compliant. Theres not one company that everyone has to play rules by. MS doesnt currently charge for content to be encoded in their format. However, if MS manages to become the delivery standard, what is to stop MS from changing the rules down the road especially when it means $$$ for them.

WM9 is a very outstanding codec. But there are things with WM9 that you cant do with it that you can do with Mpeg-4. Examples are included DVD like menus, user interaction, multiple audio tracks, etc...Add the time that it takes to encode WM9 is ridculous.

MS is always willing to share to get thier foot in the door. They have choice but to take what they can get right now. They did that with vendors and their OS and look how that turned out.

MS DRM is still in its infancy. With the T2 DVD Hi-Def, you couldnt play it unless you had an internet connection. For DRM to work, there has to be a DRM handler within the playback device that doesnt require a internet connection. T2 didnt have that. Add to it, what happens if the authenticating server goes down? The user loses the ability to use what the license and view what they have already paid for.

Last, Mpeg-4 can be used on any OS. WM9 cant. Even the OSX crowd has problems with WM9 content for their Mac Media Player.

One thing is for sure. The next few years should be very interesting. If MS would include the ability to package the content, menus, extras, multiple audio tracks in one wmv package that could be locked down with DRM, then i could see using it. DRM wont solve everything. With DRM, you will have customers that will refuse to buy it because they dont want to be told what they can/cant do with the content they purchase. Thats why MP3s are still much more abundant than ITunes will ever be.

But here we are, 6 months after MS released the news that WM9 would be supported in set tops that were supposed to be out this summer (one was supposed to be out last year from Polaroid). Still, no set top yet more players support the Mpeg-4 codecs.

I beg to disagree. Blue-Ray will not succeed for one very simple reason. The NEC standard can be duplicated using existing plant. The figure I heard to switch existing plant to Blu-Ray was around $3 billion and that just ain't going to happen. Also the NEC standard uses 635nM lasers which are pretty standard devices, I don't remember what Sony are using in Blu-Ray but they've had major grief with the lasers dying.
I'd also add that reports I've seen indicate that it only takes a fingerprint to cause playback problems with Blu-Ray discs and the other things consummers will not like is having the discs in a caddy which means it takes up more shelf space.
With the faster silicon available now there is simply no need for that amount of data to hold a movie in HiDef. In fact the big thing down under at the moment is DVD players that play DivX. The cheap ones are dogs but the unit I'm looking at will upscale from DivX to HiDef and initial reports are it looks good. Here we're talking about playing off a 20cent CD, not a $1 DVD or a $30 Blu-Ray DVD. Figure out which one the average consummer is going to buy keeping in mind we're talking about people who mostly feed their TVs via composite from the existing DVD players and think it looks just fine.

Economics will win this one just as VHS won. If the Blue ray machine is $10.00 more than the Red ray the Red ray will win. In the case of quality Beta was better but lost. Maybe the same thing here. But then again my predictions were always 100% wrong. One of them was in 1976 which stated " digital will never make it because it's too slow".

JJK

what ive seen of H264 -- it is not very good (xvid looks much better) ..

but then again while wmv9 looks nice at first glance -- if you blow up that 'amazing footage" posted on the ms HD web site -- it doesn't look to good either, but better than H264 ...