NO ONE!

LOL -- well... I guess it depends on which company you hold shares with. It certainly isn't the consumers, not at this point.

"NO ONE!" - well .. . is that correct? - G

In real wars at least the munitions manufactures and undertakers do a brisk business. These sorts of battles don't benefit us and I can see no upside for the companies involved.
Whetever either party is going to do technically would seem pretty well set in stone and they're far enough apart to make it impossible for there to be any cross compatibility. So consummers are forced to either wait and see who wins or take a side and hope they haven't done their dough.
What interests me is what effort has gone into including a reliable recordable media as part of the spec. I'm hearing more and more about DVD-ROM media that's becoming unplayable. Some of that's I know from duplicators using the cheapest media they can find, question is, is even the expensive media going to last, the best figures I've seen from accelerated aging tests are 5-10 years, I can buy CDRs that the same tests indicate will last 100-300 years. We can still get video back from 20 year old videotapes in no worse condition than when it was recorded, film if properly stored seems to last for an aweful long time too. Just what longevity these two competing formats have to offer doesn't even seem to be on either parties agenda.
Bob.

... consummers are forced to either wait and see who wins or take a side and hope they haven't done their dough.

You're absolutely right, Bob. One would think that the least expensive will win out in the end, but you never know. I'm thinking of the Beta vs VHS VCRs fiasco. Beta was better and gave a clearer picture, but the comsumers wouldn't pay the high price, so VHS won. Sony seems to want to pretend that never happened (and it would also appear that they didn't learn anything from it, either).

As for me, I'm among those who will wait until the dust settles and see who wins, then I'll invest in the technology.

The one difference here (unlike vhs/beta) is that it'll be possible to build a player which can play both kinds of discs. It'll take a couple of years before some company arranges all the licensing deals, etc., but somebody will do it, if both formats are around for any length of time. It'll cost me an extra $15.00 for that player, but I'll buy it. Before then, I'll probably have two players (they're small.)

-Travis

Let those who have truckloads of money worry about the format wars.
I have learned from the computer technology that the best thing to do is wait at least a year after something is out, because its price will drop significantly, its use will be widespread, therefore more compatibility, and I won't have to be the beta tester or a guinea pig for anyone.
Unless you have too much money, and want to follow the latest, or it is critical for your business to get it as soon as it's available, I would recommend the good old patience!

The joke's on them.

The HD-DVD crowd likes that format because it will take a small investment to retool their current manufacturing equipment to make the new media. The Blue crowd are mostly content owners (Hollywood) who like the superior copy prevention built into the Blu-Ray protocol.

The first players will cost in excess of $1,000 per copy.

But, today you can buy a DVD player with the WMV and Divx MPEG4 codecs built in. There will be more in the next couple of months as they show up on the shelves at WalMart for Christmas sales. So, the people who bought the HD camera to video their kid's birthday parties will be able to put them on a standard DVD-R.

Steve Mann

Exactly my point! Don't believe all the hype, and use the existing technology to do some great things! Not so long ago, people were happy to have cameras able to capture anything near decent. Even the broadcast quality was significantly lower. And now we have cheap cameras that do a very good job, and broadcast quality is not so far from an ordinary person, and you see them now pushing for High Definition, because it requires a whole new set of products, from acquisition to delivery. It shows that the industry is not so inert when it means big bucks. And it also shows that we have come pretty close to the limits of the current video standards, so although High Definition looks sweet, I see it pretty much as nothing else but a push to make more money.