crackerwax

So it finally happened, Toshiba have stopped fighting it and put HD DVD out of its misery like a horse with a broken leg.

Of course it wasn’t always this clean cut, I for one backed HD DVD at the start, preferring it to Blu-ray for its inherent backwards compatibility and strong standard feature set. Then again what do I know?

As a bit of a gadget freak I’m lucky enough to own both formats, HD DVD courtesy of my Xbox 360 and Blu-ray as part of my PlayStation 3. However, had the Xbox 360 not had an add on drive I certainly wouldn’t have bought a standalone player, in fact I wouldn’t have bought the external HD DVD drive either, I only have that because it was a gift.

My film collection includes one HD DVD, compared to nine Blu-ray titles. While that’s a pretty significant ratio it’s probably more significant that I only have two PlayStation 3 games! So in essence my cutting edge games console is actually only a glorified DVD player.

Blu-ray stole the march on HD DVD by its inclusion in the PlayStation 3 but it wasn’t until movie studios started to waiver that things looked to be swinging in either format’s favour.

When Warner announced their defection to Blu-ray it was game over. Everyone knew it.

I still maintain though, that Blu-ray will be the last major disc based format. In five years time DVD will still be around, replacing VHS as the de facto standard for the unconnected world, but HD content will be delivered to consumers as a download, ‘bonus’ content will be chargeable and you will never own the films. You’ll either rent movies or pay a fixed monthly fee for unlimited access.

This model won’t just stop there though, the next generation of games consoles will do the same with their games, in fact the next batch of consoles will probably be the conduit to all this entertainment.

The Oracle has spoken. Mark his words!