HD-DVD took a hit this week with Warner Bros. defecting to Blu-Ray. But anyone walking the show floor today at CES would be hard pressed to argue that there is a clear winner at this stage in the high-definition video wars.
With over 60 million HDTV sets in the United States alone, the market is ripe for high-definition video players. Of course, as Neowin users know, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players have done very poorly in the market.
There"s a variety of reasons for this based on early adopter feedback on Neowin. Most people simply don"t want to buy something that may go the way of Betamax. You also have the relative clunky nature of the 1st and 2nd generation HD DVD players. There"s also copy protection issues for playing content between players. And of course, there"s also the issue that many people don"t see enough of a difference in quality to justify the premium.
But wherever you go on the show floor here in Las Vegas, high-definition video content is everywhere. One particularly interesting demonstration is the importance of refresh rates -- 120hz vs. 60hz. It reallly does make a difference in visual quality and some of the displays were mind blowing.
We"ll have more shortly.