I have been following this closely for over a year and wrote up a little summary on another site
http://digitalhomecanada.com/forum/f...splay.php?f=53 . I am going to paste hear to maybe help bring some upto speed. Personally I am going to buy the first $500CAN player (probally HD-DVD). Right now they are a rip off at a considerable upcharge from straight US exchange rate, maybe there is a limit supply for Canada.
"Just to clear up some misinformation here.
1) DVD and CD playback are not blu-ray or HD-DVD issues but of the players being produced. So far all players annouced will play and upconvert dvds only the Toshiba HD-DVD players will play CDs and none of the Blu Ray players will play cds.
2) 1080p is support by both the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD standard and all anouced film disks for both are stored at 1080p. The current tosh HD-DVD player will not output 1080p only 1080i. All anounced Blu-ray players will output 1080p. Samsung was 1080i BD but delayed release to allow inclusion of 1080p. President of Tosh said that future players might included 1080p but that since as of right now there are only a few tvs that will accept a 1080p input it was not worth the time and money to include it now and pass the price on to the customer. Before I get flamed by people, yes there are many 1080p native set but hardly any of them accept a 1080p signal from hdmi only 1080i. My view on this is that for the minority that do have a 1080p display there should not be a difference from feeding it a 1080p or 1080i signal.
3) Sony is the inventor of Blu Ray but there are many other manufactures involved so I don't see why anti Sony sentiment applies?
4) HD over compent cable. This once again is not a Blu Ray or HD-DVD issue as both specs allow it but include a token the studios can turn on to block HD over analog. Pirating over analog is not really feesible right now so most anounce releases will not have it. However not "Blockbuster" releases of new movies have been anounced so they might change thier mind on those high sales/profit releases.
My opinion(not all can be backed up by sourses): Blu Ray is the clear choice for producers, retailers and studios. It has stronger potenial copy right protection and if it wins and does't have competion the profits should be higher. Toshiba is the choice for consumers. More reasonable copy protection and lower price. However Tosh is already going to the Chinese for production and parts are relatively cheap and little margin on them. Like the present cheap DVD players that at under $100 really don't make the manufacture lots of money or the retailers. On copy protection the way I understand it both are about the same. The difference is BD+ on bluray. The HD-DVD is what it is like DVD. The present protection in the spec is what it always will be. With BD+ it allow for addition to the protection. For example if BD is cracked than BD+ allows for additional protection added to the player by either a download or included in new discs/movies that would update like a firmware update."