The "average" user honestly doesn't know squat about HD, the multiple formats, blah, blah. They just want movies and they want them at 1080p on their 42" plasma (I hope that you guys could hear the sarcasm in my "voice")... The "average" user buys into the hype of what their local Best Buy sales guy tells them without doing any real research. They waste their money on things that they don't really understand, but get frustrated when things are just "point and click" like their slim-line 8.1MP digicam. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are NOT that simple. I know that for those of us with even a little technological experience find them simple to use, the "average" user still has a VCR plugged in at home with the clock blinking "12:00"... The "average" user doesn't understand WHY there is such a long delay in boot-up and the start of playback from these HD playback machines, they don't understand that the Blu-Ray spec is still being modified and changed, and in order for Blu-Ray to really start to shine with their extras and online content, those new standards may leave early Blu-Ray adopters with a machine that won't work with new movies (most likely the "extra" pieces will just be disabled, but still, you get the point).
Ignore that Blu-Ray is more expensive, and the "lies" that have been pushed about the technology. I think that the reason it burns me so bad is the same reason that I get mad when I am at Best Buy and I hear the sales kid telling someone that the BOSE satellite system is the best quality that they can get and will match their 42" 1080p Plasma perfectly, and will look and sound better than EVERYTHING out there when they are sitting 15 feet away from the screen in the great-room of their house...
I get tired of people being mislead. Why not let the REAL facts of the technology speak for itself. Blu-Ray has been promoting their "greater capacity" for a long time, even though they have mostly produced single layer discs limiting their capacity to 25GB. HD-DVD has been putting out mostly dual layer discs to get 34GB of space per movie. Top that off that NEITHER formats use even that much space. Oh, and HD-DVD supports 3-layers given it a max of 51GB. Only 1GB more than the maximum of Blu-Ray, but it still is there. Again, HD movies have MORE than enough space with less layers than maximum.
Is Blu-Ray bad, heck no! Bring on the HD movies! Is the PS3 bad? No way, I am not a PS3 fan, but I respect the hardware, even if there are 3 times as many XBox 360s out there (according to a report I read just today about the whole impact and cost to Sony for forcing this technology). We all here like to enjoy sound, and most of us movies too. If one person does it differently than another, that is perfectly fine. I just think that we (the consumers) are being force fed a more expensive, non-finalized, arguably less technically capable (when looking past the movie's video and sound itself) technology. Is it (Blu-Ray) good? You bet! But I don't think that it was the "best" choice.
You all are completely entitled to disagree, and yet again, I hope that people could hear my respect for Blu-Ray users even if I disagree with the way that it was "marketed."
