From the O'Reilly Radar: O'Reilly Radar > HD-DVD Is Winning on DVD Wars.

If this is true (and I hope that it is mostly to knock Sony for its unrelenting hubris) it certainly is not due to the magazine advertising for HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Whew. The Blu-Ray ads are masterful and compelling, and the only HD-DVD ads I've seen is some grinning special effects guy PhotoShopped-up to look like he's blowing a bunch of stuff up with some poor distraught robot in the middle of it all. Aroo? What the hell does that mean to the consumer? And that official web site (http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/)? I didn't think anyone could make the Flash experience suck more than it already does.

If HD-DVD really wants to win, it has to get out there with the movies people want to pay to see in super-high-def and get the price down to something reasonable. $20 is a good target.

In the meantime, I've watched the following via Netflix and the 360 HD-DVD drive:

• V for Vendetta.
• We Were Soldiers.
• Unforgiven.
• Superman II - Richard Donner cut.
• bits of Peter Jackson's King Kong (not Netflix, came with the drive).

V for Vendetta looked great. King Kong looked alright, too, but since at its heart it's more of an artful snuff film, I'm not up to watching anymore of Kong. We Were Soldiers and Superman II looked like plain DVD-quality to me, and Unforgiven was such a dark movie most of the time it didn't really matter. This is on a 720p projector with a rocking video-processor to begin with. So for me, right now, HD-DVD (and Blu-Ray) are a bit of a wash. I do appreciate, though, that special features can fit on the HD-DVD disk along with the movie, meaning that I'm not missing out near as much when I NetFlix movies that would typically be of a two-disk set when on classic DVD.

In reality, I'd be happy if Xbox Live and my NetFlix account could be tied together and I could have a download queue via NetFlix that let me always have two movies on my 360 and after I cleared one off, the next would start downloading. For now, though, physical media seems just fine.

And DVD prices are plummeting, meaning that I can stock up on a lot of sick-day movies.