The war is over! Long live the Blu-ray!

You may not have even known there was a war going on, but it's a war that just (ALMOST officially) ended. People looking for high def DVDs to go with their snazzy new HD TVs have been stuck in the middle of a format war. Hailing back to the great VHS/Beta wars of the 80s, consumers have been sitting in limbo waiting to see which of the two HD formats for DVD movies would win. There are two out there. There's HD DVD (the one from Toshiba), and there's the cooler-sounding Blu-ray format from Sony. And the problem has been that you need a different kind of player for each one. You can't play a Blu-ray movie on an HD DVD machine, and vice versa. Gaming console users have been in the middle of this, too, because if you had an X-Box 360, you had a player for HD DVD discs, and if you had a Playstation 3, you naturally had Sony's format...Blu-ray.

There have been many of us holding back on stepping up to this new tech for a couple of reasons. First, those of us with monster-sized regular DVD collections are in no mood to start replacing all our films. Second, the price point on the high def players has been restrictive, and we've been waiting for the inevitable drop to happen (remember people in the 80s stuck with those $800 Betamax machines? You could CARS in the 80s for $800...). And third, of course, was not wanting to settle on a player until we knew which format was going to come out on top.

Looks like the decision's finally been made. We saw it coming in the past few days, when mega-retailers Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Netflix all announced they were dropping HD DVD and going strictly Blu-ray. That's a blow you just don't come back from, and it was just a matter of time before Toshiba threw in the towel. Now we have word that the official announcement is coming next week. Toshiba is admitting defeat and pulling out of the next gen DVD biz. That leaves Blu-ray as the sole format, which is an answered prayer for confused and frustrated consumers. Blu-ray is now the future of DVD.

So if you've got that X-Box 360, I'd wait a little while and then start grabbing up every HD DVD movie you can, because the prices are sure to plummet soon, if that's any kind of silver lining for you. If you've got that Playstation, you can feel smarter than everyone else and act smug and superior, like you knew what was coming all along. If you went out and spent too much on an HD DVD player? I'm sorry. You're screwed. If you've been thinking about doing the upgrade, now you know which way to go. But if you're like me, you're probably going to want to wait a while to see what happens with the prices for players. Me, personally, I just can't handle a single-disc player, and I have to have the 5-disc changer. So I'm definitely willing to wait for a decent price on one of those (I'm predicting a Blu-ray Christmas this year). Like I said, there's no rush. Not like regular DVD is going away next week. And I have no complaints about regular DVD either (probably because I haven't really experienced Blu-ray yet...). But I do have an HD TV set, and the whole world's going HD, so I know I'll be heading that way one of these days. But at least now the big question is out of the way. Blu-ray wins. Bye bye, HD DVD.

I wonder if they'll put Big Trouble in Little China on Blu-ray soon? Hmmmm...