Details on Bluray Movies

[CassilineKnight]

Hi I'm a fence sitter in this format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. And I'll be honest I supported HD DVD at first and even with Warner's move to Blu-ray exclusivity I still hope that HD DVD will win since I don't want sony to win this war and I feel that the consumer will be worse off if sony wins.

HOWEVER I'm not a fool. It doesn't take a genius to see that the chances of HD DVD winning are pretty slim. And for all its faults Blu-ray still does provide great quality when it comes to HD media both in picture and audio. So I'm investigating Blu-ray Disc Players and Movies.

Now I know all about the Profiles fiasco and I'm willing to wait for a variety of Profile 2.0 Players to come out so I can compare/contrast and buy the one I feel is the best overall. Right now the only 2.0 Player I see that interests me is the Panasonic DMP-BD50 which is coming out this March I believe? It seems to be pretty awesome and hopefully that "LFE" bug problem thats occurring on the BD30 will be fixed. Other than that is the ps3 which I refuse to buy since I'd rather not give sony any of my money unless I absolutely have to. Does anyone else know of FUTURE Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Disc Players that are going to be coming out?

Now onto the MOVIES. I was browsing the deals section and I notice that some of the movies say this in the "Details Section". I"ll put several examples....

1) The Replacement Killers: Extended Cut
Details: BD-50, MPEG-4 AVC

2) The Lake House
Details: BD-25, VC-1

3) Training Day
Details: BD-25, MPEG-2

My question is what is the difference between the "details" for those 3 different movies? Is it the quality? What does BD-50 mean vs BD-25? What does VC-1 mean?

Sorry for all the questions but I want to be an informed consumer when it comes time to make the plungue into Blu-ray IF it ends up winning and I figure this would be the best site to get some reliable information other than AVS. Also I don't want to buy obsolete or lower quality movies and players unless I absolutely have to.