Despite all the claims that Blu-Ray is winning the format war based on current disc sales, I just bought a Toshiba A20 1080p HD-DVD and DVD up-converting player. That’s where my money is and here’s where my mouth is… Blu-Ray marginalized in 3 years, HD-DVD alive and well.

Here’s a synopsis of the/my arguments against Blu-Ray

1. Disc manufacturing is heavily prone to errors, some say the actual yield of good discs for a given batch is as low as 10%, meaning 90% are discarded. This leads to missed deadlines and high manufacturing costs. HD-DVD yields are as high as 90% on the other hand due to a simpler manufacturing process.
2. Due to the difficulty in manufacturing, this has led to a limited number of manufacturing plants, mostly owned and operated by Sony, hindering adoption. HD-DVDs can be manufactured in existing DVD plants.
3. Paramount and Dreamworks just switched from backing Blu-Ray to HD-DVD.
4. Discs themselves run a custom implementation of Java called BD-J (I think) which has proven to be difficult to program. The JVM is not standardised across devices either leading to high testing costs and buggy discs. The HD-DVD camp on the other hand has issued a "reference" device which all implementations must adhere to, regardless of manufacturer.
5. Disc manufacturing is rumored to have been subsidized by Sony to offset costs to the studios. These subsidies are now running out, causing studios to jump ship.
6. PS3 sales are grinding to a halt due to a lack of games. This is hindering sales of Blu-Ray players effectively. Xbox 360′s HD-DVD add-on player is a paltry $150 at the moment.
7. Dedicated players for HD-DVD are as cheap as $200 now whereas Blu-Ray players are still up around $400.
8. Consumers are growing unhappy with discs that hang or crash the player.
9. Interactive content on HD-DVD seems to be far richer than Blu-Ray. The ethernet port is mandatory on the HD-DVD spec, yielding more opportunities to link back to movie websites and drive revenue for the studios.
10. Blu-Ray is Sony and you can’t trust Sony. They’ve a long history of screwing formats up and the consumers along with them. Last year they were exposed as having deployed rootkits in certain CDs which would essentially hose your operating system. Have you forgotten Mini-discs, memory sticks, ATRAC and of course Beta-max?
11. What about those exclusive Blu-Ray only movies? Well did you know a large number of Blu-Ray only movies are available overseas in HD-DVD format? They play perfectly fine in US HD-DVD players since HD-DVD is not regional like DVD (I think).

Folks are saying ultimately downloads will win out over both formats. I’m sure this will be true but do you know how much bandwidth it’ll take to download a 15GB movie? A lot. More than you’ll have in the next 3 years.
So for now I’m hitching my wagon to HD-DVD.

I also got 2 free HD-DVDs (Batman & 300) from Best Buy for purchasing and there’ll be 5 more free in the mail via Toshiba.