Toshiba will be manufacturing robots that eat Sony products.

Better buy your robot insurance now.

Hm... Still sounds a bit speculative to me... If you ever come accross more specific items, please let me know (I'll keep my ear to the ground also).

Found this (which is probably what you were referring to):
Damn! The table does not paste well.

Seems like the differences between "final profile" (1.1) and 2.0 are more mandatory local persistent storage and mandatory Internet access.

So people going from 1.1 to 2.0 won't be affected too much (only extra features). But it is true that going from 1.0 to 2.0 is somewhat a big leap!

Once the sting wears off, Toshiba would be pretty silly if they opted not to get into the Blu-ray market (can they get rid of the silly-ass dash in their name??? GEESH)

If there's money to be made, they will jump right in.

Eric,

That's correct, also that's provided profile 2.0 is the final version, which seeing how bluray has managed its standard so far isn't for sure... That's why I would wait a bit before buying a standalone since there can be so many things that can change!

sigh...I knew this was going to happen but I really just have had such lousy luck with Sony products I just never wanted to give them money again! Oh well. What's amazing is that if you are not interested in getting a PS3, it's kinda hard to find a quality Blu-Ray player that has all the options that a cheaper HD-DVD player (like my A3) has/had built-in! I am going to just wait it out until towards the end of the year...it will be weird to have two (well, three, including the xbox) disc players in my system! I guess I am growing up a bit...

speaking of which, my M60's arrive tomorrow!!!!!!

best,
mike

We all knew that it happened, but the news is out. The official price tag for the "incentive" for Warner Brothers to go Blu-Ray exclusive??? $400 million USD! And that is just one of the studios that they paid off...

I still don't see how they can ever make up the amount of money that they "invested" and are still loosing on the sale of every Blu-Ray device.

They should have just paid all of us here $400 million (that we could split amongst ourselves) and we could have just told the world to go Blu-Ray. At least then I could afford a player that has everything that Blu-Ray has been promising and won't have future compatability issues once they finally come out. Of course, then again, Toshiba paid Paramount an unconfirmed $250 million and will have nothing to show for it pretty soon.

So the studios probably coaxed both companies to enter a format war so they would get huge paid off!

Exactly! HA! Good one EFalardeau

Thanks for that most eloquent explanation. I really got lucky when I plunked down my money at Costco last summer for a PS3. I was not as informed as I should have been, but it turned out that their deal at the time was on the 60 GB model, so I'm set.

When I was at the mall the other day, considering a PS2 game purchase, all the store employee could tell me was that the 60 GB PS3 was the best one to have. It could play all the old games, the 40 GB wouldn't play any, and the 80 GB would play some. Now I know why! Thanks!