You can argue the price of blu-ray players but this holiday season is not going to see a winner of this format war, period. There are too many releases backing each side, especially newer ones. I personally don't believe Borne, Shrek 3 and Transformers can win the format war, not even at $98 player prices because the blu-ray releases are just too strong, and I don't feel it a bargain even at $98.00 to buy a machine where I can't play 70% of the Hollywood movies (That would be the libraries of 20th Century Fox, United Artists Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney, Starz, Anchor Bay, Touchstone, Miramax MGM, and Lionsgate).
The prices for blu-ray players, I believe, are going to be equal to that of hd-dvd by mid 2008. Surely hd-dvd can't go any lower in price on the players than 98.00 lol. So they will be equal in price while the war is continuing. Also, by then Blu will be fully compatable with all interactivity. I believe blu-ray still has the best chance of winning this war. Toshiba did everything they could, but this holiday will just not be the deciding factor. I think they wasted 150 million dollars, not to mention the loss on those $98.00 players a few weeks ago. Aside from that, with support of 92% of the hardware manufacturers for players, it's almost an impossible odds game here for Toshiba alone (oh, and Onkyo and the Ventura). Blu ray has also added Sharp, Onkyo, Daewoo, and in addition to Sony (stand-alone and Playstation), Panasonic, Pioneer, Phillips, Lite-on, Mitsubishi, Samsung,Funai, Loewe, making it huge support hardware-wise.