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Today, the war ended. The war between HD formats, that is. As you’re probably aware, Warner Bros has ditched support for Toshiba’s HD DVD format in favour of an exclusive partnership with Sony’s Blu-ray. Well, after May this year anyway. With only two studios — Paramount and Universal — behind HD DVD, the consumer-unfriendly feud is, as our own Ian Morris puts it, “As good as over.” Though I will be interested in hearing Microsoft’s response, being HD DVD backers ‘n’ all…
Like most people, I’ve been waiting for the war to end before putting my money down on one format or the other. Personally, I didn’t care which won. In an ideal world I would’ve liked to have seen Blu-ray adopted for computer use, and HD DVD adopted for set-top use with a TV. With Blu-ray’s massive capacity (not to mention potential capacities with extra layers) there was huge, huge potential for dedicated use within personal and industrial computing environments. But hey, that was never going to happen, was it?
But now Disc War 2 (see DVD-Audio vs SACD for Disc War 1) is as good as over, I can finally commit to a format: Blu-ray. I figured I’d end up going for Blu-ray after my favourite film was released on the format, but I still didn’t buy a BD player. All that can finally change and I can happily lay down some cash knowing my pictures of the Queen won’t be wasted.
So long, HD DVD. I actually thought your name was better and I’d love to have seen another proprietary Sony format flop. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or in your case, the entire pack of cookies, after being smashed with a concrete slab.
