No, it would’ve been retarded. Bluray is winning because of PS3.

“If you need more than 8GB of space, use more disks. You do not need Blu-Ray to play games.”

That is a horrible solution. There are PS3 launch titles that would’ve taken 3 discs. In which case publishers would’ve put pressure on the developers to downscale everything, reduce bitrates of audio, decrease texture quality and so forth. The point of giving developers more freedom was to reduce sacrifices.

“The PS3 tried to make itself like a computer, too bad it can never replace the computer”

It can and does, thanks to how Sony lets you run Linux on it.

“The ps3 is not a real player because”

You are close minded. The PS3 is rated as one of the best players on the market. Especially thanks to it’s high quality upscaling. There are many people who buy it just as a player.

“the stand-alone players for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray happen to be far more reliable than the PS3 ”

Lies. PS3 is renowned for it’s reliability. PS3 is also renowned for it’s much better load speeds than stand alone players.

“Because Sony is including PS3 games as being Blu-Ray movies. ”

No they aren’t. That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in ages. If they did count PS3 games the number would be much higher. Even the lowest selling PS3 games outsell the highest selling bluray movies.

“Do people actually consider a PS3 to be equal in quality to a standalone player?”

Many reviewing sites consider it better than standalone players.

Actually, I do, I get a comission on everything that I sell. The ps3 is not a real player because it is a video game console that happens to play Blu-Ray movies, much like the PS2 was a video game console that happened to play DVDs. There is a difference between stand-alone players (units that only play HD movies) and video game consoles.

Have you ever even used one?

Yes, at the store, all the time. We use it to show off what some of the larger HD TVs can do. We also have another TV with a 360 rigged to it, and a couple with stand-alone players. Incidently, the stand-alone players for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray happen to be far more reliable than the PS3 and HD-DVD add-on for the 360. Customers see this, salesmen see this, its an unavoidable fact that stand-alone players will always perform better than multi-function units until what’s considered to be Next-gen becomes Standard.

It”s a fantastic movie player, much more polished than the PS2 was.

No argument there, the PS3 is really spiffy and looks gorgeous, but if you have a TV that can’t handle Hi-Def it looks like your TV is broken.

If only standalone players count and HD-DVD has sold more of those (they have), then why has Blu-Ray been outselling in movies by 2:1 for 8 months?

Because Sony is including PS3 games as being Blu-Ray movies. PS3 games are not even movies, but to the people of Sony and Blu-Ray, they will squeeze out numbers wherever they can. Remove the PS3 games from these numbers and you get a clearer picture of the real trend, and that is that HD-DVD movies have been making a huge comeback in the last four months, a trend likely to accelerate as the HD-DVD players continue to drop in price and become more common in computers.

Obviously many of those sales are to PS3 users.

What a salesman you are. Only HD-DVD players are backwards compatible? Where did you come up with that brilliant idea? Can you find me a single Blu-Ray player that won”t play DVDs? No, you cannot. In fact, after firmware 1.80 PS3 is the best upscaling DVD player under $5000.

The world according to Sony. I am aware of the firmware updates and know this, just like how the PS3 isn’t entirely backwards compatible with PS2 games, so it is with Blu-Ray movies and DVDs. A large volume of DVDs don’t play in our machine, nor any other, a problem which hasn’t appeared on the HD-DVD players. I have seen the figures on all of these, I have personally looked over sales sheets, specs figures, and observed these incidents in my very store with co-workers, managers, and sometimes even customers. This is why I don’t consider the Blu-Ray to be backwards compatible, because it isn’t. It has software that simulates it, but is far from perfect and that makes customers extra sketchy about buying the machine.