The format war seems determined to stay muddy. If I had to guess on a winner, I'd either go with Blu-ray or neither of them (a la the DVD-A/SACD format war that was won by iTunes).

I've contemplated a Blu-ray player, but at this point I figure that I'll wait a while longer - at least until 2008, I think. Blu-ray has a good bit of potential, mainly due to studio support and disc capacity. Unfortunately what I've seen so far leaves me thinking that the only player I'd consider investing in today is the PS3. The Samsung and Panasonic players both look decent, but they're priced higher than I'm ready for and are still just Profile 1.0. It's going to be late this year before the Profile 1.1 players (with the Java interactive content supported) arrive, by which point at least TrueHD decoding - and perhaps DTS HD MA decoding - will become standard at a lower price point.

HD-DVD hardware definitely has come together faster, but even with the recent support from Dreamworks and Paramount the HD-DVD software library isn't as robust as Blu-ray's. My HD-A2 is a decent enough player, and $250 was a price that I felt OK about paying to dabble in the format war. I don't have any plans to invest in much HD-DVD software (I've spent less than $100 to date, I think, and don't know when I might buy another disc), but Netflix keeps a few discs coming my way.