Blu-ray’s final hurdle is to cut down on the average cost for a dedicated player. There are some that are getting down to the mass market level, but they are being undercut by even cheaper hd-dvd players. If they manage to cut costs significantly and lower the prices of blu-ray players, they will have no problem stoming hd-dvd out.

It seems like all it would take is an aggressive film roll out from the blu-ray camp to make the war end sooner. Fox for instance owns StarWars, why not make a blu-ray “complete collection” set? Star Wars fans will wet themselves at the though of high-def glory. Or what if sony or some other major proponent of the blu-ray camp convinced Apple (another blu-ray supporter) to start shipping systems that have optional blu-ray drives? I mean, those who drink the apple Kool-aid will automatically feel “OMG BLU-RAY IS TEH BESTEST!!!!!!1″ just because steve jobs says so, and tadah you have several million new blu-ray users.

I’m sure we’re a few years from Toy story or Lion King, but once they are announced they will only be on the market for a few months then “go back in the vault”

Microsoft pays them to stay in. MS believes that as long as there is a “HD WAR” it is good business for them. If Bluray were to become the winner then the value of the 360 as a console entertainment unit goes way down. It’s value proposition goes down as well. Why buy a 360 and a separate Bluray player when you can get both in the PS3. The longer the “war” lasts the longer there is consumer indecision. Indesisive consumers don’t buy PS3’s. This is the reason all the paid blog shills for Microsoft always try and say thing like. Bluray is a Sony tax, I only want a games machine. Why pay more for both.
Anyways here’s hoping for a quick end to the “war” so that studios can get moving on pushing out movies.

2. Disney has been smacking them out of the park. The quality of the releases has been the best of everyone and their promotion has been second to none as well.

3. All studios are releasing mostly new titles because that is what sells the best right now..many people have back catalogs on DVD and the early adopters are buying new stuff first, upgrading catalog second. As the prices come down that will change…but right now it makes most sense to push new titles.

4. Blu-ray rot is likely more FUD in a long line of it coming from AVS. No one else has seen it..go figure.

Like the BD version of Matrix was pushed back for the BD-J being finalized. One nice thing is Columbia house will be carrying HD Disks this fall. For awhile I was rotating 3 memberships there at a time, just opening, full filling and closing. Got it down to paying less then $5 a DVD and blew my collection up to over 300 DVDs. I doubt I will go crazy again since I still have dozens of sealed DVDs. But will be a good way to catch up since I stopped buying DVDs once I saw a 1080 picture and decided I wont buy movies twice.

The Blu-Ray rot story looks like junk news at this point. If a real issue like that develops, I wouldn’t want to downplay it, but as of yet, it just seems like nonsense.