Humble Pie

Well ladies and gents, it looks like it is time for me to eat some humble pie. About a year ago, I posted an article where I declared my support for HD-DVD in the HD format war. But now with Times Warner declaring that they will going Blu-Ray DVD exclusive, its looking rather bleak for the HD-DVD camp (there are rumours that Paramount will be following soon).

Whilst I still believe that HD-DVD is the better format, I for one am glad that the HD war might finally be coming to an end and we can all go out and buying players without the fear of ending up with the next "beta-max".

There may be a number of reasons for HD-DVD's failure but it came down to Blu-Ray's better DRM (harder to pirate ) support that lured in the movie studios. Add to that the Sony PS3 improving popularity since the price drop, and the lowering of Blu-Ray DVD players, the deal was all but sealed.

The HD-DVD camp did not do much to help themselves either. They touted how HD-DVD were based on current DVDs and thus cheaper and yet the cost of an HD-DVD disc was virtually identical to a Blu-Ray disc. The cheap Chinese HD-DVD players never materialised in any quantity and also their talks on having a triple layer disc only fuelled speculation that  current HD-DVDs were inferior to Blu-Ray discs.

Well, ladies and gents, I believe its time to get your HD on!