My .02,
I am wandering if the push to go all digital broadcast (TV) will help the movement.
Otherwise it looks like the HD-disk is all about the green-back($$$) and some bragging right.

Personally - i'm going to just watch from the side-lines. Enjoy the games.

Personally I think HD Disks are going to just be a bump in the road on our way to on demand delivery. Who needs those pesky disks when you will be able to punch a few buttons on your remote and stream HD content from your cable or telephone connection or have it beamed to you over the air? These HD Disks are not the paradigm shift but on demand delivery may be the thing that changes how we think and purchase TV shows and movies in the future.

Having said all that I could see picking up a HD player next holiday season because I'm a hobbyist/enthusiast. So many make this hobby sound like a birthright.

on demand is nice. but what about when you are on the move. i find it unlikely to get on demand in the car, on the plane, on a boat, on vacation, etc. itd be ok if you could burn it to a disc, but if not then you will have to endlessly pay for what you watch. cable companies would love it, consumers would watch less movies. on demand is cheaper than renting though and is a nice alternative.

I've seen a number of people suggest that delivery services will replace physical media, and there are certainly a number of different avenues in development or even in place already to allow it to work. I still like having an actual disc on the shelf that I can enjoy as long as I have a working player to put it in. Call me old-fashioned... And so long as the format war either has a clear victor early (which seems almost impossible at this point) or combo players arrive quickly, I think that physical media (including good ol' DVD) will be with us for a long time to come.

If we were witnessing an HD format launch that wasn't hobbled by iffy first-gen hardware (lacking support for some of the format's notable features), an output format that isn't finalized yet (HDMI), paranoid copy protection, and a format war, then I think the traditional delivery method of "buy it and put it on your shelf" media would have a good shot at remaining king for many years to come. Even in that utopian scenario, delivery services would be positioned to continue to grow and evolve, but I don't know that they'd be able to achieve dominance in the short term. With the messy format double-launch we've ended up with, the opportunity exists for delivery services to capitalize on the confusion.

Not trying to pick a fight here but what exactly don't you like about HDMI? It is the most advanced connection we have in the A/V world, do you have an alternative? I may be in the minority but I have had a hodge podge of HDMI/DVI gear and haven't had a problem with any of them and it definitely has some advantages over component. This is coming from an old analog CRT guy but the truth is most sources and displays now days are digital. It makes no sense to me to take a digital source to analog only to have the display turn it back to digital.

I find most people don't like HDMI because of HDCP, but that has nothing to do with the physical HDMI interface. Even HDCP isn't that evil as far as copy protection goes. The evil part of copy protection are all these DRM flags which technically aren't a part of HDCP but specific to the various playback formats.

Personally, annoying HDCP issues aside, I don't like HDMI because of the physical properties of the connector. It's just not very robust and prone to pulling out of the device once it's got a bit of cable weight tugging on it. The final spec should either have a latch/screw mechanism or should grip the connector more securely.

Cheers,

Re: On-Demand delivery. It will take a major paradigm shift. Like Gonk I'm old fashion and like to hold the disk in my hands, but there is a whole generation of IPod/MP3 kids coming who I think don't care. I envision these STB will have a flash slot so you can burn a cartridge for your portable player and for guys like Gonk and I who like to have something to hold in our hands.

On demand is certainly possible, but not at HD bitrates (at least for the forseable future). My company actually helps stream video over 3G mobile networks and customers are lining up to buy 320x240x15fps mp4/h.264 content. Would I pay for something like that? Hell no. But Joe Sixpack doesn't seem to mind.

Things get a little better once you're at home and have broadband, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine how long it takes to download a movie (4-8gigs), even at much lower DVD mpeg-2 bitrates. Now imagine that you want to download nearly 10 times that amount of data....

Cheers,

My biggest problem with HDMI is the ongoing revision process. New technology is inevitable, and if you can't at least accept that then you're going to be needlessly unhappy a lot of the time. But new technology is at its best when it is allowed to evolve to a "sweet spot" before coming to market such that there is not a compelling need to force a new version of the same brand new technology on consumers. HDMI has not done that. It's bad enough that many early HDMI devices not make effective use of the audio channel. Even worse is the ongoing revision process - then there have been two revisions already (v1.1 and v1.2) with at least one more on the way. It's too easy to find a device that offers an HDMI connector that doesn't support all of HDMI's features (including at least a couple surround processors that offer HDMI solely for video switching). The degree of consumer confusion that HDMI has created is pretty disappointing, and the HDMI group deserves much of the blame for that.

Better not tell my Cable Co that or they will take away my HD On-Demand Movie Channel.