We're at war, pick a side

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/bluray_hddvd_dc

An emerging debate in modern technology is that between HD-DVD and Blu-ray for control of the high-definition DVD market. As stated in this article, Blu-ray sold more discs (2.6 million) than HD-DVD did (1.4 million). So what does this mean? Absolutely nothing.

Each of these formats have their own company backings which have created such a divide. Recently companies have started to support both formats, making more of a mess out of this. The biggest backers are Sony and Toshiba, the champions of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, respectively. Sony has a slight advantage being that they also own a movie studio and have a back catalog of exclusive movies to start out with. In addition, Sony adds a Blu-ray player with every Playstation 3 console it sells.

Conversely, HD-DVD players can be purchased for an extra 200 dollars as an add-on to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, giving more affordable alternatives to standalone players, which up until very recently have been upwards of 500-600 dollars. Sony and Toshiba have also generously offered 5 free movies with their respective players as a sort of mail-in rebate incentive after purchasing a player.

Sony is known for backing proprietary formats, as seen with the Betamax (and the MiniDisc, and the miniDV, and the UMD...) and sadly although Blu-ray barely has any traction it isn't outright losing, which is a big plus for Sony. Many Sony-haters who happily dismissed Blu-ray early on are getting nervous that its starting to gain some ground, and the glimmer of hope surrounding a few solid titles coming out for the PS3 will send Xbox 360 fanboys running for their copies of Halo 3.

This war could go a few ways. First, both could achieve saturation and people will have to pick one or the other, get a dual-format player, or every studio might just support both. A second way is that one format wins outright and early adopters of the loser will be devastated. Finally, both could lose and people will enjoy their DVDs, or maybe streaming high-def video over the internet onto their TVs (points for imagination on the blog).