[dakota81]

That's because they don't know any better. They believe *all* competition is good for consumers, and that anyone who disagrees is a Communist.

Competition between formats improve them... but only up until they hit the consumer market. At that point neither format improves at all, and only leads to consumer confusion and fear of buying obsolete equipment. Consumers also make poor purchasing decisions, like buying a format based on name recognition, or what's cheaper, not necessarily what's best.

Have one format reach the consumer market, then the competition exists between Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, Samsung, etc. to manufacture and sell players with the best quality and lowest prices. You also have the competition between movie studios to put out the best quality movies with the most added features to sell more copies. And when there is only one format, more people are buying goods which likely causes prices to drop even faster.

On the other hand, having two competing formats in the consumer market will force people to either give up access to certain content (which no consumer wants), or they have to buy into both formats (again no consumer wants).

Just look at all the recent rumors concerning hd-dvd. Would you rather have the format decided by which has better features, or have the format decided by which is first to release the cheap, poor quality players?



DVD players came out in 1997 for $1,000. By Christmas 1998 I was able to by a high end Pioneer dvd player for $250 (which still plays perfectly today). HD-DVD & Blu-ray were released in 2006 for the same high end $1000, and by Christmas 2007 the cheapass quality players may or may not make it down to $250, the high end will still be $500+. It's all right there, dvd player prices dropped faster than hi def dvd player prices currently are.