First Real Post: The Death of HD-DVD

I know it's kind of weird that I'm starting my blog with the end of something, but that's how timing is. Last week, Toshiba, the biggest supporter of HDDVD in the high-def DVD war announced that it would end production of such units and discs by March. Over the next couple of days, stores like Circuit City have stated they would stop carrying HDDVD players and discs by the end of this week! Multiple switchings from this format to the rival, blu-ray, eventually led to HDDVD's demise, originally backed by Microsoft and Toshiba.

So now that its rival format is dead, does this mean blu-ray will finally take-off? Most experts say only possibly. Although HDDVD did die, it had a couple of features blu-ray won't be able to claim until much later this year. This includes the ability to connect to the internet for extra content and picture-in-picture commentary. These features are going to be included in the second version of blu-ray players, 2.0, which most players now won't be able to upgrade to. Another downside of blu-ray is the price. Even now it is fairly difficult to find a blu-ray player under $500. This fact really is bad considering some HDDVD players were under $150. In the end, it still may take some time for blu-ray to become the main DVD format, but is there another enemy on the horizon?

With the introductions of devices such as Apple TV 2.0 and the Vudu which can temporarily download HD movies right from your TV actual DVD players may die in the near future. So does this mean another movie war, not formats, but the difference between movies being downloaded and on actual discs? Only the future can tell us before.