No knockout punches at CES?

[Deane Johnson]

I was hoping something would happen at CES that would bring the beginning of the end to the format war. I'm sure that I was hoping for something that couldn't be.

I was hoping for a $499 Blu-Ray player, but no such luck. The company who could possibly have done that would be LG, but instead, they came out with a DOA $1200 combi-player. It should have been no higher than $999, better yet $899.

True, there is some movement toward lower priced players with the second generation Samsung, but a $200 price drop won't bring major momentum changes.

The new Sony 2G players haven't been priced yet, but Sony will never be the low price leader, so I won't expect much.

Universal going nuetral could have been a killer move, but we already knew that wasn't going to happen just yet.

So, it's back to being happy with incremental advancement.

By the way, the reaction of the HD-DVD fanboys to some of the announcements is downright funny. For instance, someone in the HD-DVD camp said Meridian and Onkyo would be developing HD-DVD players. Neither of these companies have said anything at this point, but that's been changed on the forums to read "Meridian and Onkyo announced HD-DVD players." Didn't happen that way.

The announced 51Gig HD-DVD disc has some fanboys believing movies have already been pressed on them and they will be compatible with every player made. No such things have been announced, only that they've developed a 51G disc. Who knows what it will take to play it.

Stay tuned. The doors haven't opened yet.