I never said either format is superior. I forgot to mention that HD DVD can now do up to 60 gig disks and Blue ray can do 80 gig. There is only so much bitrate you can add to a disk before current players cant play it. As of now current blue ray players wont be able to play the 50 and 80 gig disks. Not sure if HD DVD players will be able to play the 60 gig as I have seen no information other than from toshiba saying it will. Either way now neither format is better. Plus when you talk to every single person who owns both players Every single one of them back HD DVD more than they do Blue ray and every single one of them say a spec of dust will render a blue ray disk unplayable. The encryption you talk of exists on HD DVD and it has yet to be cracked and same with blue ray it has yet to be cracked. All people are doing now is circumventing. Also the BD+ encryption of blue ray has still not been implemented on any blue ray movies currently out because they are having playback problems with it. It still remains currently HD DVD is better not because of the quality of the movie but because of things like features/playability/lack of bugs that blue ray has. That list you gave is true but 90% of that list all those theatres do is UPSCALE the movie rather than correctly "fix" the origional movie. Most formats of movies out are 4000p in the origional film and most of those blue ray movies just "upconvert" the 540p dvd rather thand "downconvert" the origional 35mm film. The upconversion is the reason you see more blue ray movies out than HD DVD titles. One problem blue ray has is Universal. They dont have them and Universal is a HUUUGGGEE company. One thing I like about Universal movies is if you pause and walk away for I believe its 5 minutes the Universal HD DVD's automatically start playing a screen saver
. What is hilarious about Blue ray is they have all that space but lack "extras". It could be because most of the extras are 480p/540p instead of High def but I dont know that answer.
However right now mpeg2 is not superior to VC1 which blue ray is mpeg2 and HD DVD is vc1. I am not doubting that Blue ray will eventually be a better format but Sony needs to get out of the mpeg2 mode and get into at least VC1 mode or a better format than VC1 mode (I honestly dont know if there is a better one). Some studioes have put VC1 movies on the blue ray but I dont have the knowledge of what movies and what studios are doing so just that some are.
In conclusion currently if you go by playability HD DVD is the winner, encryption means jack and there would be less pirating if there was no encryption and the if the studios were smart they would offer people to be able to download movies for a price. If you just go for quality currently either will be as good as the other. However if you look at the future well its still up in the air as to which will eventually be better. It may be blue ray it may not be only time will tell. I will agree that if Sony can get their heads out of their *** Blue Ray will succeed in being a winner over HD DVD.
*edit oh and MT yes optical media would be DVD/hd dvd/blue ray basically anything that is read with an optical laser
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