In few months prices will drop 10 times. I cant wait :)

I sell these for 950.00 on ebay, they rarely sell because there just too expensive. They dont even burn CD's which is kind of a downer.

I think i will stick with my DVD's for a long while to come.

There is a driving force behind such things.

Extra capacity & HDTV are driving the next formats, and the people buying it are the ones who will decide who wins in HDDVD and Blu-ray. The informed buyer will be the ones who ultimatley decide and DRM could be the deciding factor.

I Dont have a HDTV and so to me the extra capacity is the incentive. But I admit to ripping the odd DVD and if im honest wont buy Blu-ray if its not able to do so cost effectivly as im not the type of person to buy films at such prices in the shops. Renting or borrowing a DVD and copying it for me works a treat, ripping out all the trailers and the FAST trailers and the anoying disclaimers on the bloody things !, its as if they delight in cramming all this junk on the disk.

I am looking forward to putting as many DIVX films on a disk as i can and play them on a DivX compatible player, which im sure wont take long if in fact it doesnt allready play them.

Lets hope the early adopters pick the right one :P

DRM in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are the same. So it's unlikely to be the deciding factor. Most people won't even know what DRM is, until the format war is long over.

I still find it stunning how many people don't know what DRM is, and yet they buy all their music from the iTunes store. When they come crying that they can't do anything with their music, I laugh them away..

Since it will be people who allready have a DVD player are the ones targeted to buy the next gen players, im sure they are aware of the woes of playing "Copied" disk and the anoying region free tweeks. They probebly dont know what DRM means or stands for, but they will be mindfull of the end result and doubt as many will jump in head first like they did with DVD and this time choose a player that does all they want. These formats will be under pressure to keep them secure, and i see a situation where the first one broke will see a availability of "films" that the user will want to play. They will require a player that plays those films, hence the choice to buy Blu-ray or HDDVD. Of course once broken this "Film" could be transfered to both formats, but since some people will want to rip there own disks, the broken format will probebly prevail.

Since the higher format disks will be more expensive than DVD's I doubt I will be buying them apart from sale disks, since once I have watched a film, wouldnt desire to watch it again with such a price tag to warrent buying it. Yeah im tight, but its am honest answer.

Blu-Ray in HD-DVD disks are not that much more than regular DVD's 10-15%

I am willing to pay that overhead for the quality increase alone, the extra features that both formats offer is a bonus

The reason for the new format is not honestly about more space on your DVD. It is about control. Hollywood moguls want to stem the tide of pirating. My current DVD player is more than sufficient. When the players(whomever wins the format war)become dirt cheap along with the disks, then I'll buy one.

Quite true, if I dont have a HDTV then there is little to tempt me from a DVD or a copied DVD converted to DIVX playing on my DIVX player with stunning quality !.

Why anyone would buy a new recorder until Hollywood settles on a standard instead of splitting between two different tecnologies is beyond me. Also, why anyone would spend the type of money these companies are trying to charge is beyond me. Justr wait until Hollywood gets it's act together and the price drops through the floor. Besides most of the releases in the new format are movies I wouldn't waste my time watching anyways.

I'll wait until the Blu-Ray + HD-DVD writer/reader drives are available and skip all this nonsense :)

I think I'll skip both actually and wait for HVD. :)

sorry!
but i stumbled upon your website and after reading all the misinformation here...maybe this will help......
don't know about benQ..but i have the blu-ray panasonic sw5882, excellent burner for everything...cd also. it is true that it takes longer to burn discs, but at 25gb, and hdv..45mins is not bad!
i also have the samsung p1000 bluray player...plays everything except mpeg4 stuff... the 1080p(not1080i) mode is exciting to watch,,,(using the samsung hdtv5668w1080p).
also the blu ray burner writes over the last recording.....
nero update....will copy and burn your bd discs. at circut city i watched the samsung blu ray demostration...the showing was bad also....but after the set was adjusted and the house of flying daggers was showing....the picture was wonderful...get really close to a high definition showing on tobshiba hdv...action scenes drag...the compression is not what i want....give me more space...
if you are desperatly in need of a burner RIGHT NOW1 just email me.....

Still too expensive, especially considering it's a format that is going to fail.

LOL, keep telling yourself that.. It helps if you rock backwards and forwards in your chair, repeating the phrase over and over again...

please...... why it will fail.?
you probably mean it won't last...you are right! nothing ever does.
i am waiting on the holo discs...blu ray is already at 500gb. nest is the green laser baby>>>>> tdk is showing the way...
imagination is everything....money nothing

Ha, I knew Mark the Blu-Ray shill would show up to respond to that. Tell your masters at Sony I said hello.

I'm just messing with Gillepsi, I was suprised he hadn't shown up yet preaching his smug blue-ray religion to us. Seriously though I have no idea which format will win, no one does. It isn't possible. I sort of believe that neither will win to tell the truth though, DVD is already widely established and good enough for most people.

If anyone can pull it off, noting certain mistakes, it will be sony. unless they are morons and want a betamax2 on there hands.

Do you suppose AOL would ship these? LOL
Crammed chock full of.............????????
Actually they should ship an AOL Live Disc w/ say React OS & all software they make +++...

When new tech appears such as Blue-ray or HD-DVD then there must be an easily discernable leap in quality over previous generation thus earning the title 'Next Gen' but I'm seeing the easy winner here and current king.. standard DVD. I went to Circut City and could only see minor improvements on their 1080p HD TV running a special demo. Without being knocked off my feet my feet will walk away - straight back to DVD and wait for the next claimed Next Gen. We need to see improvements in the realm of VHS to DVD sadly this is not it. The good news here is this technology may have the effect of lowering Progressive DVD players which will make more of an impression, strengthening standard DVD's base and future.

$24 @ Fry's Electronics for a 25GB disc here. Burns at 1-2X. I'm in the Dallas area, don't know about other places.

That's how all nex-gen formats start. I remember with DVD's in the 90's when their players used to cost an arm and a leg. Everybody I knew said that VHS is the only way they go, and that it was too expensive to be anything.

Blu-ray is just following that same plot. With companies forcing it on people, it'll be adopted and will "defeat" HD DVD's in the format war.

VHS was a horrible format though, the difference in it and DVD was absolutely huge. DVD was also very compact, didn't need rewinding, etc. There was never any question that DVD would replace VHS.

The companies can't force anything on people. They don't have to buy it and if everyone tells the companies to take their product and go to **** the companies will back down (as they have many times in the past).

bigsexy022870 mentions the high cost of blank discs. No mention is made of how much they do cost, however. Does anyone know the current price? Anyway, by the time they become commonly-used, the prices of both the writers and the blank discs will have fallen considerably.

Hmmmm, maybe, but I bought one of the first Dual-Layer Burners in late 2003, expecting DL media prices to lower to reasonable level within six months, and three years later I'm still waiting. It ain't necessarily so.

If it's not affordable and not standardized, it's truly senseless to even think of buying one of these. Call me when they're able to put a terabyte on one disc!

"If it's not affordable and not standardized"

The article says

The BenQ BW1000 can write and read 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray discs at 2x speeds, and also supports writing to both DVDs and CDs by incorporating three different lasers.

Concidering it is quite a bit cheaper than its rivals, if you are interested in this much storage then this could be on your shortlist.
What exactly dont you like about this product ?
It is new technology and it will find its market like everything else, if you cant afford it then good luck when terabyte on a disk comes out, but then there will be something else to whine about.

"Call me when they're able to put a terabyte on one disc!"

yeah right, elusions of self importance runeth over.

we see about two to three different kinds of Blu-ray drives here in Japan, approximately about 98000yen, which is about 850dollars? or so. apparently not many people are buying yet, but it seems to be selling a little better than HD-DVD, which not many people's even interested in.

as for the price of the BD-disks it's fairly reasonable, considering the prices of blank CDs and DVDs here...

Although I'm not buying yet because I've got no need for that much storage atm.

Honestly, even if the drive was 50 bucks i wouldnt buy one. The massive price of blank media makes it absurd to buy one. Like with DVD, I will make the purchase when the price is right. For DVD it was when the price per mb was actually cheaper then that of CD's. It will happen with blueray and hd-dvd. It will just take time. 2 dollars for a blank is the price i'm looking for, nothing higher.

$2 for 50GB? You'll be waiting awhile. :P

DVD+-R 9 are still priced quite high above $3 each. So a 25GB Blu-Ray disc priced at $15 would be good already.

I am going to buy Blu Ray recorders as soon as they reach the 299-399 price point.

And most people I know still won't buy DL discs because of that...not when you can get single layer for less than 30 cents each.

£555. That's not so bad. Just buying the PS3 will suffice from the beginning though. As the PS2 did with DVD until players became cheap.

I hate to tell you this but the PS2 sucks for playing dvds. Oh sure it works fine starting off but it won't get half way thru beofre it starts skipping....even on a new dvd.

My PS2 plays fine for DVD's, has done for 4 years. I use it as my primary DVD player still.

I have no doubt the PS3 will play DVD's and Blu-Ray slicker than than PS2, as it's designed to be a media hub, more than the PS2 was...

This is what I don't get. This thing plays games fine but won't play a DVD right to save my life.

awesome! can't wait for it =)

That's still well over $1000, esp. w/ falling dollar...PASS.

Really... I wonder why euros are being compared to dollars. Maybe because 799 euros seems like a lot less than $1500 than $1017 does. Editors, not just on BetaNews need to stop doing this.