<ul><li><a href="http://www.tech.co.uk/digital-home/general/blogs/2008/01/18/oi-blu-ray-wheres-your-sense-of-irony">gee look at these neat "new" features Bluray has</a></li></ul>

how buggy, unfinished and expensive these players are.

I feel no sympathy. we tried to warn them.

Repeat doesn't work on any of the HD-DVD movies I have at work. It does on our BluRay players. Who needs repeat on a movie? Maybe the same people who lust after PiP?

So long as they play movies and give you menu access and operation, they are complete.

If I may jump back in time a little - Nakamichi cassette decks never had half the features on board (music search, remaining time, motorised door, dolby S, HX-Pro, spectrum peak indicators, dual-speed rewind/f-fwd, auto tape select etc.) as most of their fellow Japanese stable-mates offered on their cassette decks, but they were always considered by the bulk of those who wanted the highest performing product of it's kind to be the only machine worth having.

Little-used features are all very well for format scoffers to moan about the apparent lack there of, but the fact of the matter is, most people just want to insert a movie, watch it and turn the player off.

Clearly some people are a little peeved because they shelled-out a fortune for their 1080i HD-DVD players at Walmart, but thankfully we no longer have to wonder which format is going to do what.

Who won didn't matter to me as either format offered superb playback performance, which at the end of the day is all that matters (until recorders are available).

BluRay has the backing of the vast majority of electronics manufacturers. Makes you wonder why. It's certainly not because they all love Sony.
Higher storage capacity? Possibly - it's important. More so than PiP.
I never used PiP on my TVs that had the feature. It wasn't a great feature in the first place, which is why hardly anyone laments the lack of PiP on most TVs available today.
Now it looks like many BluRay players will have PiP, and yet the HD-DVD fans still aren't happy.
Sour grapes?

how many points one can miss on a particular topic.

BD's 'new' 1.1 and 2.0 profile features are nothing new to the people who have been paying attention. Claiming the innovation crown on these particular developments is laughable.

that's his point. put the horse away.

I can read. His topic has already been beaten to death. When he calls 60%+ differences "marginal," I'm going to be skeptical of his neutrality.

The features being marketed are new to Blu Ray. It's not the BDAs job to market for HD DVD. If people don't know that HD DVD can do the same thing, complain to Toshiba.

Is the writer complaining that the BDA is not marketing HD DVDs features? As I said below, he should be complaining to Toshiba. It's their job to market HD DVD, not the BDA's.

Ignore me all you want. I have never said anything that was untrue. I prefer Bluray for its technical advantages. I've freely admitted that HD-DVD has better interactivity right now. Considering that Bluray has the technology in place to catch up, I'm willing to forego that for now for the higher capacity and bandwidth afforded by Bluray.

If HD-DVD finally kicks the bucket, the studios have no reason not to use all of the bandwidth and storage they are given.

Look, I see the "irony" in that those features were part of HD-DVD from the beginning. We all know this.

However, it is the BDA's job to market those features. Are they supposed to not do this because they weren't the first to market with them? That's just silly.

Compression is king. Lossless audio is silly.

And when asked whether they knew HD DVD already had these featues they had a blank stare. They're clueless.

The closest thing is a "booth person" saying that they didn't know HD-DVD had those features. The whole exchange was, of course, paraphrased.

The BDA is trying is marketing to people coming from DVD, not HD DVD. The features are new to them.

Does HD DVD go out of their way to advertise BDs advantages in content, capacity, and bandwidth? Of course not, it would be counterproductive.

Their job is to market HD DVD, not provide consumers a comparison. The same goes for Blu Ray.

Read the exchange below. The BDA is not marketing to consumers who are in the know. They are trying to convince people with DVD players to buy BD players.

My point, which pierreb (and all of the other HD DVD fanatics) obviously missed by a mile, is that calling a 60%+ increase "marginally" better casts serious doubts, in my mind, about their credibility as neutral.

Stop trying to stretch this into something it's not. Like the other guy in this thread pointed out to you, focus on the "point" being made for a change.

yet you continue to say things like not now but in the future they will be able to....

No I'm not quoting but you get my point.

His point, as I'm reading it, is that the BDA is marketing these features as new, when, in fact, HD DVD had them first.

That's true, but Bluray is not marketing to HD DVD owners, but DVD owners. The features, whether coming from HD DVD or BD, are new to them.

The BDA is under no obligation to tell consumers that HD DVD also has these features, or had them first, and it would be counterproductive for them to do so, the same way it would be stupid for Toshiba to inform consumers that BD has more content, more capacity and more bandwidth.

I don't expect HD DVD to market the fact that their only content comes from Universal and Paramount, though I know it to be true.

Since you made no other comment in your post, you agreed by extension.

You don't care about capacity the same way I don't care about having PIP and internet connectivity right now.

I actually think bandwidth is far more important than capacity. I know that compression is always improving, but less compression is always better in my mind, and Bluray requires less compression than HD DVD because it has higher bandwidth.

I also believe that HD media will be a viable computer storage medium for awhile, and more capacity is clearly an advantage there.

And since BD has significantly higher bitrate, , you can run the lossless audio (whether compressed or uncompressed), and have a much higher video bandwidth ceiling. Since both VC-1 and AVC are scalable, higher bitrate means than less video compression is necessary.

As a sidenote, you'll also have more capacity and bandwidth to run your PIP features, when Bluray finally gets that off of the ground. I get a kick out of the HD DVD fanatics dismissal of capacity when it relates to adding special features when they say: "Just add a 2nd disc." Obviously, you can't run your PIP special features off of 2 discs.

However, less compression, particularly with video, is generally better.

Also, audio can only be compressed so far and still be lossless. Even lossy compression (the DD+ Transformers track, for example) can be very good. I'd still rather take the compression variable out of the equation whenever possible.