HD-DVD owns Blu-Ray?

I don't have any ties to a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player, don't really care which wins. All I know is that I will wait to see which one wins as I'm none too keen to buy a freakin expensive player, just to have the honour to buy a more expensive DVD. Sure HD yadda yadda, 1080p yadda, whatever, no early adopter here - too much coin!

So I found this article in the Washington Post pretty interesting

Cymfony, a company which culls trends from posts on Internet sites, reported that positive discussions about HD-DVD were 46 percent higher than Blu-ray in a survey of almost 18,000 posts on blogs, discussion boards and consumer review sites from October 1 to November 30.

"Negative Blu-ray conversation indicated a lack of consumer trust in Sony, as well as gamer displeasure with selling Blu-ray in association with PlayStation 3," said Jim Nail, a spokesman for Cymfony

So that's interesting in two regards. 46% higher positive rating for HD-DVD is pretty good and a survey of 18,000 posts means it's not just a bunch of Sony (or Toshiba) fanboys running up the tally. It is also interesting to see that there is a negative association with the PS3, like gamers don't want to have a Blu-Ray foisted upon them... The whole Sony battery thing is hurting too probably.

I guess if I was going to buy one, I'd probably just buy the external HD-DVD for the Xbox 360 which runs 200 bucks or so, versus the 1000+ standalone units. Either way - I don't see a next-gen purchase coming for me in 07.