Blu Ray vs. HD DVD - a winner?

[TJ]

if you're like me and have been sitting back waiting to see which format will come out on top before you completely repurchase your dvd collection, i think your wait may be over.

WalMart has officially gone Blu.

why is this the deciding factor when a bunch of companies have been going blu over the past month? walmart is the largest retail chain in the world, if they're not going to sell hd dvd, then it's not cost effective to produce the discs (same reason there are pretty much no ao rated video games - walmart won't sell them so no one makes them).

i've seen this coming for a while - most of asia (where most of the world's population is located) is on the blu bandwagon, and hd dvd has nearly no presence over there - but in the past month or so, one after another, north american companies (like blockbuster, best buy, and netflix) have been going blu.

while toshiba has yet to officially pull the plug on hd dvd, the announcement is expected in the coming weeks.

so barring something drastic, the format war is over and after the likes of betamax, minidisc, and umd, sony finally wins a format war.

[TJ]

...and 4 days later, it's official. toshiba will be gradually reducing the shipments of hd dvd hardware with a complete halt by the end of march.

The financial analysis firm Goldman Sachs said Toshiba would raise its profitability between 40 billion yen (US$370 million) and 50 billion yen (US$460 million) a year by ending HD DVD

so, if you're one of the 730,000 people who bought a stand alone hd dvd player (600,000 of which can be found in the united states), congradulations on the purchase of an upscan converter!

i bet sony's just drooling over this. people might actually start buying ps3s since it's cheaper than pretty much any stand alone blu ray player.