My hat goes off to Bill for having the guts to write on his website what many of us who work for Blu-ray exclusive studios have been saying amoungst ourselves for months. Chad wrote a post as well that I totally agree with.
I got into HD on disc with the Toshiba A1, and while it upconverts SD DVD exceptionally well, and has played them back pretty flawlessly, the HD side of the equation hasn't done so well. What turned me off about HD DVD was the sorry and pitiful support for the first generation players, even when it was know that there were problems with clean, glitchless playback.
What sold be on Blu-ray was the exact opposite of my HD DVD experience. My PS3 has flawlessly played back ever one of the 80 Blu-ray disc I own. You get firmware updates pretty frequently, and after the last one, I was just smiling ear to ear. I have asked a few HD DVD fanboys "what good is IME, iHD, online downloads, and all of that other senseless crap that has nothing to do with the movie itself, if the player cannot get all the way through a movie without a hiccup?". Many claim they have not had the problems that I have, but I say that just makes everything worse. There is no quality control between players if that is the case.
Toshiba lost me, and will never get me back. They had their chance, but they decided my dollar was not all that important to them. I bought my last HD DVD about a month ago, and will not purchase another.
I applauded Sony when they compromised on a single format for DVD. They lost alot of money on that compromise, so I am applauding them again for not giving an inch to Toshiba this time around.
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