*ME*, personally... I chose Blu-ray for the larger capacity, greater bitrates, uncompressed audio and the BD burner just so happened to be factory installed in this VAIO laptop.
Yes! It will play any Blu-ray Disc AND any standard DVD.
As a bonus, this machine can also BURN to Blu-ray and/or any standard DVD blank.
DVDs aren't going anywhere anytime soon, so it doesn't really matter to me.
PLUS, I can always pop for a HD DVD player and plug it in... no worries!
*I* prefer Blu-ray... but I am open to whatever may happen.
YMMV.