Buying HD player?

Here is my semi-informed take: the HD discs in both formats do yield pretty consistent improvements over upconverted conventional discs, particularly in my case- where I am using front projection on a fairly large screen and any visual artifacts, or lack of resolution, is more noticeable. I use an HD Leeza as a native scaler-- pretty good 'black box' so my basis for comparison is probably better than most scalers built into players and TVs. Black and white movies could show improvement as well. The resolution of those old films on film is amazing, if the print is good, and many have been restored in recent years. The bottleneck has often been the medium through which it is delivered to the home user- since most of us do not have serious film projection capabilities at home.
As to which of the two formats is better, my experience has been that more depends on the mastering quality of the particular release than on the inherent qualities of either format. Theoretically, Blu-Ray could be better given its larger storage capacity, but it is my impression that HD discs are easier and cheaper to manufacture. I bought a first generation LG multi-format player, to be able to experiment with both formats. Keep in mind that if you buy discs, rather than rent them, your largest investment by far will be the 'software,' not the player. And, committing to one or the other formats means that you can't change hardware without changing your library.
As to the format 'war,' I think Blu Ray was 'winning' in the sense that it has far more hardware manufacturers committed, and initially, the race was for studio content, but since almost all studios release on both formats, I don't know that there is a meaningful difference in getting content through one format over another.
The frustration I have is that some of the so-called "lossless" audio formats encoded on these discs can only be accessed at this point by using the analog audio outputs on the players, and relying on the D/A converters in them- can't believe they are of very high quality given the price point of most players. External decoders, using HDMI 1.3 format, are still scarce to non-existent at this point in time, at least high-end ones, as opposed to those built into receivers. (Eg, I'm not sure when Meridian will release a processor with the capability to receive and decode those signals and higher quality audio was also one of the selling points of these new "high definition" formats).
The format war has impeded market penetration of the format, which is unfortunate.
I approach this stuff as a sideline to my interest in hardcore analog audio, and I know there are others here that are more knowledgeable and better informed on things digital- SRT Mike is one user here who might chime in.

 

If you go to AVSForum.com, I believe they have 4-5 subforums to all this stuff. It is a pretty good site.

TP