Dual Format Discs/Players, Good for Blu-ray?

[Kenshiro]

Its obvious the HD DVD fans are busy popping champange and celebrating LG making a dual format player, calling it a defection from the BDA. They are also praising the "neutral" studio Warner for offering dual format TotalHD discs thinking that this signals the merging of formats.

I actually see this as signs of things moving towards Blu-ray only. Why are they so happy about a dual format player? Because they want to watch Blu-ray exclusive movies of course. This dual format player will give them a smooth transition to Blu-ray and allows them to keep their collection of HD DVDs. And by Warner releasing movies on dual format discs, the movies that they buy will still be viable when Blu-ray eventually wins out.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if the BDA wanted LG to make this player to give HD DVD fans an easy route to Blu-ray. These announcements in no way affect the huge studio support advantage of Blu-ray. With many more titles coming to Blu-ray this year, owners of this player will still be buying more BDs than HD DVDs anyway.

Just my 2 cents...