Following up my article from 2 years ago on this topic...

I just got back from CES, and one of the cool things I saw while there was LG's new "Super Multi Blue" drive.  It reads HD-DVD's and reads and writes Blu-Ray discs.  Would love to see some HD-DVD write action, but I guess that'll have to wait.

Either way, it's slow (4x) and expensive ($1200), but it's out ... soon.  The good news is that the connections are there - HDMI, component and composite for video, and optical, coaxial, and discrete 5.1 for audio.  And the even better news...  50GB disc storage capacity for either format.  That's about 9 hrs of 1080i and 23 hrs of standard def.  Rock on!  Beats the daylights out of the 2 episodes of Battlestar Galactica I can get on my current DVD.

And I have say that watching high-def DVD video on 72" plasma screens at the show was pretty impressive!

A player like this lends itself to perpectuating the war between the formats.  Guess this one won't be ending as quickly as the VHS vs. Beta conflict did.  And of course *that* means more casualties on the losing side when one inevitably wins out.  Interesting BBC report picked up by Slashdot yesterday on this topic as well.

So I guess we'll just have to wait to see who wins this one, while listening to the usual suspects drone on and on about how their player or their PS/3 ... er ... I mean "unit" is superior to everyone else's even though it's way over priced.  Blah blah blah.  In the meantime, I won't be upgrading any DVD's.