With all due respect, which is it? Blu-ray "looks the same", or "looks better"?
I have only HD DVD, and haven't seen a Blu-ray playback since the 'early days' when I laughed at the 5th Element playback display at a Best Buy. But I do read, and it appears Blu-ray has improved. The dual format releases from Paramount & Warner do receive pretty equal reviews for Picture Quality. It can be hit or miss for audio quality, as Blu-ray still doesn't support HD audio like HD DVD does in requiring all players to be able decode TrueHD and DTS MA. Some Blu-ray only releases do have excellent audio quality by getting around this by including space wasting uncompressed PCM audio tracks. I guess they need to find some use for that extra disk space, when advance video codecs provide equal or superior PQ with much less disk space.
But, all quality issues aside, why does there really have to be a "format war"?
I have an HD DVD player. I could care less if Blu=ray is still around 40 years from now, as long as I have HD DVD content. I have Dish Network; I'm happy & could care less if Direct TV has more customers. Do Xbox owners want Playstation to die and go away?
Yet 90% of all Blu=ray fan posts I see are directed at looking forward to seeing HD DVD die and go away. What's wrong with both formats continuing to be available, studios producing in both formats, and consumers choosing the player that fits their budget and equipment?
Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before - studios don't want to have to produce two formats, retailers don't want to have to carry two formats. Retailer manage to carry 3 formats or more for game titles; they'll manage. I'm watching HD Movie net as I type this. They just had a a promo for the premier of John Wayne's "The Searchers". I own it on HD DVD, in VC-1. For HD Movie Net on Dish, I'm sure it has to be in Mpeg4. Studios will do what they have to do to sell content.