I see this move as Microsoft and Intel's cozying up to the bigwigs at the studios at the expense of their customers. It would be an interesting poll to take, but I bet that 95 % or so of the Wintel user base prefers Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. Had Microsoft and Intel announced for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD would be deader than last week's carp. This serves to stir up the market, but I believe that Blu-Ray will prevail in the end. It is just that Windows OEMs and users will have to rely on third-party solutions.

I really don't think Intel cares one way or another, aside from the possible fact that they don't want to be in the pool with Sony. The ultimate conclusion to this battle will involve component cost of blu-ray vs. hd-dvd hardware. If volumes can get the price down, then that's a big deal.

Unfortunately for HD-DVD, PC's won't adopt HD-DVD for some time, even if it's supported by MS. The PC hardware industry is extremely cost driven, as well as extremely phobic of new peripheral hardware. The winner will be whoever can get the product out first, en masse, with media behind it.

I've heard that only HD-DVD will have backwards-compatibility with DVDs. If that is the case, I sure as hell won't be buying a PC or Mac that comes with a "Blu-Ray" disc drive, especially after all the backup DVDs I've burned.

Even if Blu-Ray does have backwards-compatibility with DVDs, I'd still rather have HD-DVD; HD-DVD sounds like it'll be much cheaper than Blu-Ray and will have a less orwellian DRM system on it.

So really, I'll spring for whichever is cheapest, least restrictive with DRM, and most compatible. Both sound spacious enough to a person with only an 80 Gb hard drive.

Neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray are directly backward compatible with current DVD. They both use completely different technology from current DVD.

HD/BD use blue laser which focus a tighter beam. Current DVD/CD use red laser. Future hardware will have to have a blue and a red laser to play HD/BD and backward compatibility with current DVD/CD.

From my understanding MS may be more willing to back HD-DVD because it will make more concessions to MS's proprietary VC-1 codec. While Blu-Ray is more based on MPEG-4, but does include VC-1.

HD-DVD won't be in the upcoming XBox, so who knows when MS will actually ship something with the format.

It is known for sure PS 3 will ship with Blu-Ray.

I'm not sure why Intel is to back HD-DVD. From a computer storage standpoint Blu-Ray is the clear winner.

As far as cost both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD would be far more expensive than current DVD in the beginning. And both will come down in price as they become more of a commodity. At this point no one can say if one would be more expensive for consumers than the other.

I don't mind having two devices: a dvd and a blu-ray. DVD players are cheap as dirt these days, and I'm buying a PS3 or two as soon as they come off the docks. (Yes, I'm part of the "hack the PS3" initiative.)

As far as regular joes, it doesn't seem to me like it's like a big deal to have a DVD player as well as a Blu-ray player. There's plenty of room under a huge, HDTV for many components.

Unless something changes (lower HD-DVD prices, present in the xbox360 at launch), I just don't see HD-DVD having any traction at all.

Who would pay $1000 for a HD-DVD player, when you could get a PS3 for half of that?