It's a very good point - the war has driven down hardware prices faster than would have happened without a war, particularly for the Blu-ray hardware (which probably wouldn't have even come to market until late this year if it weren't for the need to compete with HD-DVD).

The flip side is going to be how the competing formats affect studios and stores from a software standpoint. If studios support both formats (like Warner is), will stores stock multiple versions of a title (HD-DVD, Blu-ray, and DVD)? Look at Warner right now - logistics have got to be an issue for them at this point with all those extra SKU's to deal with, and you get things like the Harry Potter Blu-ray gift boxes that got shipped with HD-DVD's of the fourth disc (Goblet of Fire) rather than the Blu-rays that should have gone in there. Of course, if Warner picks a side (as is rumored may happen in 2008) you're going to see movies appear on one format or the other with no "software neutrality." That's fine for stores who don't have to stock as many different copies of a single title and for those of us who are neutral at this point (with either neither formats represented, or with both), but at some point the studios ought to ask why two formats need to exist - and if they were to switch to a single format industry wide, would they see greater profits. Every time I try to work through the possible futures for this format war, I get tangled up in weird logic puzzles like this and re-affirm my belief that it's all a big mess.