Yea I didn't mean the PS3 supporting the blu-ray would guarantee its win, what I meant to say was it would help alot. With the ps2, dvd was already well on it's way into the market and alot of people already had dvd players, however the PS3 will likely come out when blu-ray is still in its infancy and thus it will help alot of people get a blu-ray player earlier then they might have otherwise.

And to answer the question about what the xbox360 uses, currently it uses standard dvd's if I'm not mistaken, but they will be releasing an upgrade so it can use HD-DVD's, at least that was the plan last I heard about it. If that has changed someone'll probably correct me shortly.

The Blu-Ray can hold up to like 50 or whatever gigs and I agree it certainly will be better than anything else at the moment. The only problem is how much will each product cost? blank media, games, and movies, how much will those be >_< I can only speculate it'll be quiet the money because of the storage.

Actually, while the first gen of them will be more then current, I cant see it being any worse then when dvd's first came out. There are trends, cd's originally were a buck or two a disk for 650mb and then like 3-4 bucks for 700mb and RW ones,then they were like 10cents a disk when dvds came out at a couple bucks a pop for the basics and a few bucks more for dual layer ones. Now Blu-ray's will probably be a couple bucks a disk now that dvd's are down to a quarter a disk. Could be wrong but the market controllers realize people will start using a new tech much faster (thus allowing them to maximize profits faster) if they make it easier to get started with the new tech money wise.

First off the XBOX 360 just has a DVD rom in it, they are proposing the upgrade to an hd-rom, but was not shipped with it, and HD vs Blu-Ray, well, even if HD is inferior to it, which it may or may not be, depends on who you ask, there is going to be a HUGE following with PS3 something that probably will be the downfall of HD DVD, however, companies like BestBuy and such are going to support both, i guess it will come down to who releases more quality media for it first... personally for my own recordings, I am waiting for the holographic drives to come out this year, 300+gigs and then up to one terabyte within three years, like OMG rofflecopters to that one!

Alright here is what I know about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Blu-Ray (BR) has the ability to be backwards compatible, should the device manufacturers wish it to be so. So that being said the BR drive of the PS3 will not be the reason that the PS3 wouldn't be backwards compatible.

Now on the comparison of BR to HD-DVD. HD-DVD9 uses the standard red laser of the current DVD format but uses a higher compression Codec. This still only allows 4 gigs of data to be burned on a single layer DVD and 9 gigs on a dual layer.

There is a second Blue Laser DVD format that was proposed by NEC and Toshiba that would allow current manufacturing lines to be used and thus allow cheaper manufacturing of a new format but it doesn't seem that it will make it.

For more information read the page at this LINK.

With the 4/9 gig limitation and the problems associated with high compression codecs I personally see the HD-DVD standard lasting to long due to the fact that it wouldn't allow HDTV and High Resolution movies to work to well on DVD's.

As for the cost of the units and media, as stated before in another post or 2, as more of the tech hits the market and more movies come out in the BR format you can expect the cost to come down.

For more specific information on the Blu-Ray standard here is a LINK to a FAQ put up by the Blu-Ray group.

Blue ray is an awesome technology. It just keeps getting better. I think they will truly get away from the DVD/CD stuff and everything just be put onto flash cards. But they defintely need to get MUCH MUCH faster to be better.

The only real problem with going to flash cards or any type of memory stick is that they are "volitile memory", for those that don't know what I mean by that; volitile memory requires some sort of powersupply to maintain it. So that being said, you have to keep plugging the card or USB memory stick into a drive from time to time to keep it charged. Also they are easily erased by walking through a EM feild.

I doubt that we will ever really get away from a hard memory system like a DVD of some sort. They might get to be very, very small but I don't think we will ever get to a point where we can fully trust volitial memory as our mainstay for long term memory.

As for the speed at which we write the new Blu-Ray disks, the only real problem with getting faster write speeds is the speed at which the laser can reliably write to the disk as well as the reliability of the delivery of information to the drive itself. With the advent of SATA and the SATA2 standard I think we will see the write speed of the Blu-Ray drives reach 2x and 4x before 2 years has gone by.

Hey, don't tell anyoBy i said this, but a certain sOund company (that makeS very nice speakers) is resEarching blueray, and will possibly put it into a product soon to come. But don't get me wrong, i am not sure entirely, but i do know this from a trustable resource.

All the figures I've seen for the HD-DVD states around 18GB per disc, not the current 9.

I know when customer's ask us, we tell them we're waiting until someone comes out ahead.

Still I've not heard anything about which format Vivid or anyone else in the adult film business has chosen. Ultimately, they are the ones that decide which format will triumph, not the PS3 or Xbox crowd. Kinda surprising isn't it? Heck we get a subscription to an adult movie production magazine because they are the ones working with the latest and greatest CODEC's first.

Funny how the world works somtime...

WHat product of this company would be 25/50Gigs .. rather if they give away free blu-ray movie disks with its home theater systems it would make sense .. but again, copyright issues are there. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Just for the info :

Blue-Ray disk drives that READ: CD/DVD+-/Blue-ray and WRITE: Blue-ray would be out by the mid of FEB ...
B-R Drives that READ: CD/DVD+-/Blue-ray and WRITE: CD/DVD+-/Blue-ray would be out somewhere between MAY - AUG.

Now thats quick but rest assured these drives rnt going to be cheap.

Regards
Dhanesh.