Since they've now invested in hd-dvd/blu-ray. It's what they should do. But they would in fact sell me a new DVD-player which can play mpeg4 movies (and which costs $80 like a high end DVD player, not $500 like a blu-ray player) and I would not buy and rent exclusively high-def movies, and I think many others would do the same.

I mean I am going to convert to high def DVDs exclusively once the format war is settled and the players are reasonably priced. The disks, at least, are already similar in price to the old format. I would just convert sooner. In fact, I would convert twice, just like they want me to, because I would assume my eventual hd-ray player would also have been able to play mp4 based regular DVDs with 720p movies on them, so I could keep those.