Format Wars

The high-definition DVD format war has been a very long and frustrating one, leaving consumers confused as to what format they should drop $500 on for their respective players.

It would appear, though, as if Blu-Ray is dominating the battle. Many major corporations have switched over to Blu-Ray as their main HD disc format, with others following suit. Just recently, NBC, Warner Bros., and expectedly Universal have all jumped ship from HD-DVD and dumped their profits into the Blu-Ray format. This format war has been much unlike past ones, notably the VHS v. Betamax war, which was quickly resolved when many "unnamable" industries chose VHS as their main proprietary format for entertainment.

That being said, however, the HD-DVD still has a fighting chance, but not much. Toshiba has done their best to swoon competitors over to their format, but it appears as if Sony has a larger market base to work with. All of this is aided by the fact that Sony BMG studios, as well as games for the PS3, are all in Blu-Ray format. Blu-Ray brings quite a bit more to the table than HD-DVD does. It has a startlingly higher capacity, and an amazing resistance to scratches. With Universal being the last major company to back HD-DVD as of now, the format could very well be on its last leg. My personal advice for now is that if you're contemplating between a Blu-Ray drive/player or an HD-DVD player, then you should probably drop for Blu-Ray or a multiformat player such as the one offered by Samsung (but that also comes with a very hefty price tag, 4 digits at launch).