War Over !!!

The final shots have been fired in the high definition format war, and as the battlefield falls silent Blu-Ray emerges victorious, leaving HD DVD battered, broken and defunct.




In a high-def rerun of the VHS/Betamax conflict of the 70s and 80s, the two rival formats have sluged it out over the last two years in a battle for our hearts, minds and wallets.

Japanese manufacturer Toshiba launched HD DVD confident that the format, which was based on existing DVD technology, would be perfectly placed to take advantage of the rise in sales of high-def TVs.

After all, they reasoned, even though HD DVD weren't able to store quite as much data as a Blu-ray disc, the discs and players were cheaper to produce than Sony's format, and the pictures and sounds were just as good.

HD-DVD was also, just, first out the traps and initially had strong support from Hollywood. But the expected sales never materialised, just one million in total, as consumer indifference and confusion set in.

And of course, there was Sony's trump card.The Blu-Ray playing Playstation3 may have underperformed commercially as a gaming console, but in the past 18 months they have managed to get six million of them into our living rooms.

More and more movie studios got behind Sony's format, and Warner Brothers' announcement at the beginning of the year that it would exclusively support Blu-Ray effectively signalled HD DVD's demise.

The final nail was hammered into the format's coffin earlier this month, when the worlds largest retailer, Wal-mart, threw its considerable weight behind Blu-ray.

So, Toshiba and its partners will now cease producing HD DVD hardware and Blu-ray is left with a clear run at the high- def market.