Gnorts, Vorts! Even though Betamax was superior to VHS in many ways, the economic advantage of the VHS transport mechanism beat out the superior quality of Betamax.
With the announcement by Blockbuster that it would only stock Blu-ray HD vids, Toshiba and Microsoft's HD DVD was history. Indeed, the price of those DVD's and players have plummeted. Not so for the Blu-ray players. Buy-in still runs in the $400 range with a $378 lowest price seen at Walmart. AND if you bought-in too early, you probably need a s/w or firmware upgrade in order to take advantage of the latest indexing of Blu-ray media. This shopper hit the web for advice and found the answer at, of course, Sony. You can buy the 40 GByte PS3 with a built-in superb Blu-ray capability for $399 and it even includes a WS Blu-ray version of Spidey III. And get this, not only do you get a game for free; but, I set it up on my wireless home LAN and it automatically updated the Blu-ray player (and game) to the current version. Oh, and in the words of K, "I guess I'll have to buy the White album again." My first vid purchase (other than Spidey) was Sir Clarke's 2001 in WS Blu-ray. Terry PS (pun?) In order to use a standard style remote instead of the game remote, you have to buy the Bluetooth Sony remote since the PS3 does not accept the standard universal remote.
