HD fanboys - want cheese with that whine?

[almy]

While not every Blu-Ray enthusiast has been a saint on this and other forums, I, for one, am getting very tired of the HD fan comments I've read. One writer called Sony a loser based on its Betamax and Laserdisc - while it is commonly known that Laserdiscs (originally called DiscoVision) were the brainchilds of Universal and Philips. Another gripes that Blu isn't complete and claims that HD players were "final" when first brought out - where is the original model's 1080P? Others say that Sony must have paid a fortune to Warner to go Blu and how underhanded that would be - but they conveniently forget that Toshiba paid Paramount & Dreamworks 150 million. I remember last year when Paramount went HD exclusive, some HD fanboy posted some computer artwork of scenes from Paramount movies with the BluRay logo being trashed (they were creative, but disturbing). Another says that Blu is too expensive. The prices of Blu players are dropping and Blu discs have always been priced the same or lower than HD (excpet for some Fox titles - but Fox has always been expensive). Consider the HD combo-discs where the HD owner is forced to pay a higher price to get HD and SD (which he'll probably never watch) on one disc. I can sympathize with HD enthusiasts that may have invested a lot of money in HD collections. But, Warner could have dumped Blu and gone HD exclusive. Format wars suck and unless the entire genre dies (like Quadraphonic sound of the '70s) there will always be a loser and a winner. "You pay your money and you take your chances". Naturally, I'm glad Blu won - and once the HD fans give Blu a chance, and they see a flood of great titles coming, they'll be far nicer than they are now.