Hollywood reams the consumer yet again

[LANGUAGE WARNING - Pissed off Badger Alert]

I'm not sure if you've heard by now, but I've been following the latest escalations in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war. The Digital Bits has had some of the best coverage and it is worth checking out. Basically, Microsoft dropped a chunk of change at Paramount and DreamWorks front door in exchange for them to stop being platform neutral and go HD-DVD exclusive. So, now they going Universal in the HD-DVD camp with the other studios either being Blu-ray exclusive or platform neutral.

What has this done?

Hmmm...how about fucked over the consumer royally? In an idiotic format war that was in no one's best interests, Blu-ray looked to be starting to win and that is when Microsoft acted. Now, it has sown the seeds of confusion within the potential audience and I agree with the prevailing opinion that less people will go with either.

I have been considering my options for some time; cheap MS Xbox HD-DVD drive or stand-alone Blu-ray player (PS3 isn't worth even considering). Now, I can say I have no idea what to do. I think I will likely still with DVD because as usual Hollywood has continued to fuck the consumer and we just continue to bend over and take it...

UPDATE:

So, I have given this more consideration and I've decided they both suck, yet I still want them. Realistically, I will probably not buy either as the waters are just to murky right now :(

I got this of the Digital Bits:

In a poll over at IMDB, fully 63% of the 16,000+ people who responded chose: "I have neither system and this makes [me] want to enter HD media even less. I'll stick with DVD for the time being." The next largest group, 10%, said they had no opinion and another 9% didn't know what HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc were. So that's 82% of people who either just don't care, don't know about the formats or are turned off by the format war.

It's not like we're talking polling people on the street, but this is from a movie junkie website!?!?!? No one (at least in large numbers) wants to go near this mess. That so disappoints me that these two camps our ruining HD optical media for the whole industry...