I thnk what this boils down to is that a major advantage, at this time, for Blu-ray is the larger studio support it currently enjoys. HD DVD owners, some, may begrudge Blu-ray this support and wish for studios to be forced to release materials on all formats.
Yet, there is no proof that studios have entered into exclusivity agreements and when questioned, I have not heard of a single studio admitting to such an agreement... that I know of.
Yet, if the playing field is leveled for studio support, then that would likely force Samsung, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp, and other companies out of the HD player business, which is anti-consumer. With Toshiba currently manufacturing the only HD DVD stand alone players on the market, they have worked hard to gain market share by cost cutting and subsidizing players from the start. Their primary goal has been cost cutting measures, not necessarily quality improvement measures and no other CE company has joined them in HD DVD only production. Why? Most likely because there is no money to be had unless you hold all the royalty cards as Toshiba does.
Blu-ray has had much more accurate market pricing without a lot of cost undercutting and has had open competition between multiple hardware manufacturers. This cost remains significantly higher than HD DVD, but is likely maintainable because of the direct market competition of stand alone player pricing, and because the exclusive studio support, at this time, helps steer buyers towards their products.
Their product being players manufactured by numerous manufacturers, not just one. I would think that there would be some question out there as to why there is only one CE manufacturer exclusively supporting HD DVD and what anti-competitive measures might be taking place that makes this happen.
Yet, I just think that the govt. needs to stay out of things and that consumers will make their own decisions as they are doing with the real world attach rate figures that clearly indicates Blu-ray to have a higher per-player attach rate rather than the Toshiba fed numbers or the Sony fed numbers. Independent analysis using real world player estimates, show that Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD. Yet, HD DVD is still doing well - so I'm not exactly sure, still, what leads someone to call it anti-competitive.
