This is indeed a tricky one.
Both sides have players out in the US/Japan. And from initial reports both types of players are extremely buggy. It looks like both sides have rushed their first products to market, with fairly poor results. I won't be buying a stand-alone player anytime soon, but i'll probably buy a drive for my PC if the price is low enough (sub £150).
I don't think we'll see a clear winner for quite a while. My bizarro opinion is that both formats will co-exist for the foreseeable future, and instead the hardware manufacturers will turn to dual-format players. Early adopters will probably end up buying two players, but by the time the mainstream starts to dip their toe in (probably Christmas 2007) I think they'll be quite a few multi-format players around.
So that's my speculation.. two formats living awkwardly side-by-side. Just look at how successful DVD-Audio / SACD have been!
Both sides have players out in the US/Japan. And from initial reports both types of players are extremely buggy. It looks like both sides have rushed their first products to market, with fairly poor results. I won't be buying a stand-alone player anytime soon, but i'll probably buy a drive for my PC if the price is low enough (sub £150).
I don't think we'll see a clear winner for quite a while. My bizarro opinion is that both formats will co-exist for the foreseeable future, and instead the hardware manufacturers will turn to dual-format players. Early adopters will probably end up buying two players, but by the time the mainstream starts to dip their toe in (probably Christmas 2007) I think they'll be quite a few multi-format players around.
So that's my speculation.. two formats living awkwardly side-by-side. Just look at how successful DVD-Audio / SACD have been!
