You know that BD vs HD-DVD war is slowly pissing me off. I've seen prices for hybrid blue & red laser players currently on the market and that's just ridiculous. You can get pretty descent standalone BR or HD-DVD players for less than $200 and 5.25" PC units also serving as DVD recorders for less than $100 each yet no company has come up with anything worth mentioning on the hybrid market with prices more than double of separate units. I know the hybrid laser diodes and pick-up units are expensive but not in that price range (we're talking ~ $35 per unit here) and they might be hard to come by but I thought some company would come up with a mechanism with two (OK three if they add DVD functionality in as well) separate laser & pick-up units for each format by now but no... they prolly think it's impossible and even I know that isn't true. Remember that Kenwood 72x CD unit that used three separate lasers and pick-up units to read three tracks at a time? And that was what, more than 5 years ago at around year 2K? Kenwood has done it (tho admittedly with less than stellar controller to drive all that) so long ago and now I'm supposed to believe companies like Hitachi, Sony, Pioneer, LG, Toshiba, NEC,... aren't capable of making that same thing (only with three different lasers) themselves nowadays? If you ask me there's something way smellier than your average crap we're talking of here. Either that or they're waiting for some poor Russian sod to assemble such unit on his own and not have the buck for a patent so they can than steal the design like they normally do
My 5 cents says they're intentionally sitting their fat arses on our tomorrow that never comes and all that "format war" was agreed on years ago by major players. "But we must cover the cost of R&D"... yeah, rite... what R&D??? They can't even test products with so obvious problems a moron can spot the very first day of using it... what, they've just run out of morons they could use for testing products before launch? 
Don't tell me all those masses of Serbians with extremely low foreheads all work already as night club bouncers and can't be arsed 
OK it's more like "roundish" $200 for BD players with initial purchase price of $300+ and mail in rebates and some "complimentary" movies cushion the blow to ~ $200 ... but you do need ~ $300-400+ of "spare change" to buy something within a price range of $200-300 nowadays. Anyway, even if I said $400 each you still get both for $800... that's two boxes with all that goes along with them for way less than a single hybrid player. Don't know what the actual exchange rate is but I'd say 800 pounds is at least double the value of 800 USD right 
It seems we're back in the days when having a 2ft Hi-Fi setup with 10+ remotes laying around is a norm. That's progress for you. 
Ulrica-ca-ca-ca-ca 
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