Samsung Duo-player

[stevei]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

Universal players will only cause both formats to coexist especially when some studios release better soundtracks on HD-DVD titles.

The vast majority of consumers DON'T CARE about uncompressed sound vs dolby digital because they aren't even listening to dolby digital properly from their dvd players. The vast majority of people I know just play dvds through their tv, both audio and video.

We can debate blu-ray vs hd-dvd all we like, but the contest is with dvd. Everyone I talk to in real life about the subject has no interest whatsoever in a "better than dvd" format. I tell them how much better blu-ray looks than dvd and they just shrug their shoulders, they don't care, they're quite happy with their dvds played back through their tv speakers. The only reason they bought into dvd when they already had vhs is that the boxes take up less shelf space and you don't need to rewind discs. Blu-ray and hd-dvd have neither of these advantages compared to dvds, so they see them as an irrelevance.

At the moment, hd formats are selling something like 1% of the quantity of dvds. If either or both hd formats are to be a success, this % needs to increase drastically. Universal hd players may be one way that the hd formats can start to win the war against dvds.