Check your facts noob and stop reading articles from 2005/06.
1) Blu-rays are absolutely using the second layer and have been for a while now.  Go look at the Disney releases for the last year.
2) 24P is better than 60i in terms of accurately reproducing a film.  TV manufacturers are starting to create 120hz TVs so that 24p material can be shown without interlaced filler frames as is done with current sets.  Those 60i HD-DVDs that you are talking about (which I highly doubt they are doing btw) would be bad because they have the interlaced filler frames embedded onto the disc.
3) Blu-ray has a higher max bitrate (54Mbps vs 38Mbps IIRC) which leaves plenty of room for the jump to 12-bit color (aka "deep color"), which is the next step in better picture quality for home viewing.
Yeah, I'd say it's nicer.  There isn't really a single thing that HD-DVD has over Blu-Ray at the moment. Maybe Batman Begins and the Matrix, but those are coming in the next few months. Thanks WB.
		
		
	 
"Shaun Of The Dead," "Hot Fuzz," & "Heroes - Season 1" are some of the reasons I went HD-DVD.  Sadly (but proudly), so is "Army Of Darkness."  "The Matrix" looks like crap in HD, I have to say.  Every sub-par special effect really stands out.  And the pimples on Trinity's neck are...  well...  let's play it safe and say fantasy killer.  Anyway, that's besides the point.  
As far as BD's "use" of their second layer (as I'm told by my friends in the Disney camp), it's used only for a PIP approach.  Granted, the times are going to change with v1.1.  But, as we stand today, BD25 is used more from a direct practical standpoint than BD50 is.  While HD30 is being used across the board.  
On the note of 24P vs 60i, HD-DVD's have been using 60i via h.264.  And it looks sharp.  To me, and everyone I brought around to help me test equipment, HD-DVD had the image quality over Blu-Ray at the time.  Not by much.  But it looked better.  And I was prepared to buy a Blu-Ray player at the time, had it looked better.  And while Blu-Ray has a larger bit stream and TV manufacturers are "starting" to make 120Hz units, it isn't standardized yet.  You rich Pasadena folk may be able to throw out your old TV each year every time a new format emerges.  But to the rest of the world, 720P is still HD.  And we're now noodling in the 1080P realm with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.  I have a 47" 1080P unit, and I love it.  However, I don't think the rest of the world cares like everyone in this forum does about bigger, better and more.  Most of them will slightly care, but will usually pick the cheaper format to upgrade into when that time comes.  That's why VHS won last time.  It was cheaper than Beta.  And to the Average Joe end user, it did the same thing for cheap.  
Blu-Ray is ahead of its time.  And beyond that, as I've said before, Blu-Ray going to introduce a massive amount of problems with policies, seeing as Sony (a movie studio, record label, hardware developer) is heavily invested.  It's going to give the MPAA an ungodly amount of power over the consumer, which is what they're frothing at the mouth over.  Right now, the prices of the discs are usually the same as HD-DVD.  The players are far more expensive, but are coming down.  They have to, as Blu-Ray is in a fight with HD-DVD.  They have to gain an edge to lure more people into drinking the Sony Kool-Aid.  But if HD-DVD shuts down, it's on with the proprietary measures.  There's no format for them to compete with.  You just wait and watch.  You'll see.  New releases will get more expensive than they are now.  And they'll have more control over how you use it.  
Economically, HD-DVD still makes more sense due to the high quality the end user gets for the lesser expensive price point.  Plus, it keeps a movie studio out of hardware standardization.  But Sony did a remarkable job including a Blu-Ray player in their PS3, taking a price hit for each unit sold just to get that standard in place.  It put a player in homes, even without HDTV's installed.  The PS3 was the one thing that really propelled Blu-Ray ahead of HD-DVD.  
And c'mon now....  What is this "noob?"  Are you 16, from 2003?  You're sweet.  But I work in this industry as well, and deal with this stuff daily.  Go back and play with your RedCam and prepare to preach 4K.  And close your Wikipedia window while you're at it.