Sony is backing BD. They backed Beta too, and lost.
HD is much better then BD in sound and picture. BD uses outdated technology to pack all that information on one disc. Some say at the price of picture quality. I’ve heard some negative things about BD and only one about HD. The only negative about HD is that it was delayed getting released and it was delayed not because of something Toshiba made but because of something an outsourcing company made.
If you want to make a purchase and feel confident that it will be the chosen format, I believe HD is the one.

Kit,

If this were a page reviewing BD-R drives and how great there storage capacity was, I would certainly concede the point to you, there is no denying BDs have superior capacity for data. However, this page is (should be) a discussion over the relevance of that fact in regards to the HT product story above. My sole point has been that the storage angle currently serves the BD market in regards to movies and in fact hinders it’s ability to mass market due to the increased cost, production and retail sales of the end result. If the arguement was strictly PC data storage/bang for buck, then sure, a BD disc is a great back-up solution. I do however feel that production costs will plummet on the HD-DVD side far faster, and despite the disadvantage of size, 2 HD-DVDs may cost far less than 1 BD in the next 6mos.

Fine, lets look at todays cost.  If you walk into a Staples today and purchase either format in single-layer media, the HD DVD costs $18, and the Blue-ray $20.  But for that $2 difference, you get 10Gb more space, or 2 hrs more recording time. 
I have yet to hear of anyone complaining about problems with damaged discs, and I haven’t encountered any problems either.  But in general, we all know how we should handle and care for optical media.

Kit,

The vulnerability addressed by 3M may very well have aided in the BD disc’s ability so stave off the occasional steel wooling, but it most certainly added to the production cost. This is never a positive thing. My point all along, regardless of how the negatives get addressed is that there are a) Too Many negatives that need/had to be addressed, and b) The production costs and/or difficulties make the format disadvantaged out of the gate. The Edsel was a really great car, ever heard otherwise? Sure you have, beacause it got off to a bad start…

O’ Henry…  If you’re knowledgeable enough about the difference in how Blue-ray stores data, then you should also know that they addressed the vulnerability of scratching back in 2004, and this is no longer an issue.  Depending on the hardcoat, it has been shown to be resistant to steel wool. 
Blue-ray also supports all the HD codec types as HD DVD does: VC-1, AVC/MPEG-4 (H.264) and MPEG-2. 
It is the studio releasing the title that is choosing an appropriate codec type (no studio is completely wedded to any codec), and even Universal, which is HD DVD only, is releasing a title in AVC/MPEG-4 and not VC-1.