Remember a while back I reported that HD playback would only be possible on PCI Express systems due to AGP video cards not supporting HDCP? Looks like I was partly wrong: HDCP-capable cards do exist in the AGP form factor; they're just not all that common. They're also upwards of $150 or so -- which, along with the $650 for a Blu-ray Disc drive, is still pretty heavy sugar to shell out.
Once again, signs point to "wait". Especially since my favorite video company, the Criterion Collection, isn't going to produce HD in either format anytime soon.
On a mildly related note, some folks over at the Blu-ray Forum posted a thread with screenshots from both the regular DVD and the BR edition of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (one of the first BR titles). The images seem to have gone missing as of this writing, but they were seriously impressive -- not just for the resolution of the pictures, but the colors were more discrete and not as washed-out (although I suspect that may be more a product of the post-production and mastering than the format per se).
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