I agree, Sony didn't give anyone a choice with the PS3 and people are starting to get annoyed with this fact. If the PS3 does rocket ahead next year though, Blu-ray still has a very impressive chance of winning the format war, however HD DVD is here right now and impressing virtually everybody who matters so quite a battle indeed.

Posted by: James Woodcock | December 6, 2006 10:52 AM

Another day, another pointless survey. Next week I expect another independant survey to demonstrate how blu-ray is winning over punters with its cute use of the word "blu".

If media sites stopped publishing the results of these meaningless surveys maybe companies would stop running them? Perhaps someone should survey the visitors to this site... D'oh!

Posted by: meeble | December 6, 2006 11:42 AM

agreed, another BS survey and the public needs to be educated properly. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are equal in terms of picture quality, HD-DVD may be slightly better at the beginning but that's long gone. Most Blu-ray movies have better audio (uncompressed) compare to HD-DVD. Blu-ray discs are scratch-resistance and carry much more capactiy compare to HD-DVD. HD-DVD players are cheaper then Blu-ray players, well except for the PS3 which is impossible to find right now. It's funny that only the negative comments were mention about Blu-ray, just to show the bias here...

Posted by: knight | December 6, 2006 4:58 PM

Unfortunately Sony do have a bit of a track record in shafting their loyal customers, and this track record may turn round and bite them badly this time.

From personal experience their support of Beta dissolved almost overnight, leaving their Beta owners with no support and a diminishing supply of tapes and service. Beta is not the only example either.

I must only mention that the track record they had for manufacturing quality gear that could be relied upon has greatly been diminished by the stuff that they have been shipping of late, especially into the UK. At one time you could buy something and be totally assured of the quality if there was a Sony badge on the front. No longer, you have to be very careful and do your research before buying something from Sony these days. Personally I'm always looking at the back to see where its made. Usually if it says "Made in Japan" you're OK.

After sales is also an area in which Sony could greatly improve. Recently I bought a Sony sat nav for the car. Good solid quality, good interface, but no map updates are available and not much sign of them coming soon.

So all in all, they have squandered a great deal of the good name that they earned for themselves in the past. If somebody from Sony is reading this... learn from it. I'm sure my experiences are not atypical.

BTW... I have a Sony 46X, I'm just going to be very careful what I put under it, it's not a foregone conclusion it will be a BluRay.

Posted by: Kirsty | December 6, 2006 5:34 PM

Ok, here's the real deal and the inside info of this whole mess: I work in the laser industry (I am currently in the far east) and have been told that the source of this whole issue (it explains everything including the delays, decisions by sony to make prices high at launch ect) is that the blue lasers are very fragile during the assembly process and have a high amount of rejections - they did not plan this but they simply cannot make the finished product fast enough and end up with many rejected ones during assembly and testing. They are stable and reliable after correct assembly and if they test OK but this number is much smaller than originally anticipated and has dramatically slowed the launch os all blue laser related products until the problems are solved.

Posted by: Simon Harris | December 6, 2006 6:11 PM

Well if you work in the laser industry surely you must know that HD-DVD tech uses blue lasers as well. Are they having the same issues?

Posted by: Brent | December 8, 2006 4:31 PM