I don't understand some of you. It's as if you have something to gain by bashing one format over another. To be clear, I have seen this from fanboys in both camps. Does it really make you feel bigger or better after you ridicule someone who owns a player from the opposite "camp"?
I own both because there are titles on each format not available on the other and I don't get all the fanboy "my-daddy-can-beat-up-your-daddy-and-because-of-that-I'm-better-than-you" rhetoric.

These are nothing more than tools to view your movies.

Well, I think the idea is that two formats won't work for the general public either because they don't want to pay for it or because they don't want to donate space for 2 players. The simplest, least expensive way to overcome those limitations is to eliminate one of the formats. And HD formats won't survive without adoption from the general public.

And, technologically speaking, purely in terms of A/V quality for movies, Blu-ray does have the greater potential due to higher capacity and bandwidth. I say potential because anyone can make something look terrible if they wanted to (or were incompetent) regardless of bandwidth.

It doesn't. Nobody should be ridiculing anybody else, whether on this topic or any other. But it seems some people take the whole thing personally.

Well, I don't have either format (yet, but I will be going Blu once I get spouse approval on the expense), so I can't make the comparison. I don't doubt that it'd be difficult to notice.

However, there has not been a title released in both formats that maximized the potential of each format in order to make a real comparison. Just about every dual release has used the HD DVD encode on Blu-ray as well, so they should look identical.

Quoting nolesrule:

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Well, I don't have either format (yet, but I will be going Blu once I get spouse approval on the expense), so I can't make the comparison. I don't doubt that it'd be difficult to notice.

I don't dabble in such things personally.  But I've followed a few threads over at AVSForum.  I've seen people who are obsessive about the topic take screen captures and blow them up 200% to compare details.  And there hasn't been any trends show up that would favor one format over another.  Some of those people are downright crazy and I believe 100% that if one format was showing even a minute advantage over the other, they would have noticed and we would have heard about it.  So I don't think the extra space will ever give us better video.  Advances to the authoring tools might over time (as they did with DVD), more experience authoring discs might give us better transfers, etc.  But in my opinion, there's enough space on both formats for nearly every movie out there.

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However, there has not been a title released in both formats that maximized the potential of each format in order to make a real comparison. Just about every dual release has used the HD DVD encode on Blu-ray as well, so they should look identical.

This is a common argument.  But don't forget, the whole purpose of these codecs is to compress extremely large files into as little space as possible while retaining transparency to the master.  They're trying to fit things into less space, not make larger transfers that take up more space.  And even if they do use all the space available, there's very little likelyhood that we'd even be able to see the differences under normal viewing circumstances.  At least that's been the case so far.

Don't forget that Disney, Fox & Sony have never published on HD DVD.  So you can't make the argument that their transfers have been held back by HD DVDs 30GB limit.  So if the extra space would make a difference, you would have expected to see it show up in their releases.  So far it really hasn't.  While you can't make direct comparisons, their best titles don't seem to blow away the best HD DVD has to offer.  According to most people who have both formats, both sides A-list titles are about equal with neither side really pulling ahead of the pack.

Quoting Mark Harrison:

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This is a common argument.  But don't forget, the whole purpose of these codecs is to compress extremely large files into as little space as possible while retaining transparency to the master. 

I agree with you. And for 90% of scenes out there, it's going to be perfectly good enough. But when you get into things with fast motion, lots of explosions, moving water and the like (busy frames that are constantly in flux from one frame to the next), that's when you're compression is going to be least effective. Add to that high bitrate and/or lossless audio along with legacy audio, multiple text, audio and PIP overlays and special features and you use up the bandwidth pretty darn fast.

As for the studios you mention, sometimes I wonder, and I've never heard anyone else bring it up before, if they were trying to keep their encodes under 30 GB just in case they were to go format neutral or switch to HD DVD. It's just a theory of mine, and I'm not trying to pass it off as fact. It's a dumb idea, but I wouldn't put any dumb ideas past a hollywood studio.

But like I said earlier, it's a moot point until there is a title released on both formats that actually maxes out the potential for both formats. Otherwise, there's no way to make an apples-to-apples comparison.