yes keep pace, players are not the end goal but a means to an end. The end is movie sales. Like you said "It's not practical for me to buy one, and find out I can't watch the movies I want". In order for HD DVD to survive it needs some exclusive studios and enough to make people willing to invest in it.

BD movie sales are higher then HD DVD movie sales. The reason is that stand alone player sales only looks at a fraction of all play back devices. Even though HD DVD has a few more SAPs out there the difference is shrinking and BD has a lot of PS3s out there. Do you think Warner (since we were discussing them) cares if the guy buying the disk has a PS3 a SAP or an HD DVD add-on or a drive in a PC? So Toshiba does not need a slight lead in SAPs but a big one to counter the PS3s.

To use an example we can both understand. Think of it as the end of the year in Hockey. team X and Y both have the same number of points and the same number of wins against each other. Y won the last game, does that mean Y is in 8th and X eliminated? No, it would depend on the goals for/against of the two clubs during the year.