As far as the overall issue, I feel pretty much the same way of not really caring what format wins, and instead just wanting there to be one. Warner was probably in the best position to do what they did, since they have been releasing their movies on both formats at the same time. For them, a simple look at the numbers told them what format leaded, and prevented any misleading stats based off "stand alone hardware" sales, or sales of movies only on one side or the other.



The format war isn't helping the prices on either side. Technology gets cheeper to make as more units are produced, and neither side really has a strong enough of a foothold with the war to get prices anywhere near where they need to be for widespread adoption. While there were a few HD-DVD players that were cheep, they were usually generation one units simply being liquidated. If all the consumer electronics companies were competing over players that did just one standard, there would have likely been players more affordable then what is out now.

HD-DVD players are no less complex to build then Blu-Ray players. Both have to support the same codecs, both use blue lasers, and both offer up to 1080P video output. I was actually surprised to see HD-DVD players below the price of Blu-Ray players, since HD-DVD mandated certain interactivity and ethernet options from the start.