New Technology TV

With evidence rapidly mounting of the imminent triumph of the Blu-ray high def DVD format over its rival HD-DVD format, there are some things that could delay the end of the format war. Surprisingly, the HD-DVD format is only indirectly a factor. That's because technologies that blur the lines between the two formats are the forces that are interfering with Blu-ray's ascendancy. The presence of HD-DVD is the only thing contributing to that interference. The actual HD-DVD format itself isn't widely regarded to be a threat anymore in and of itself. There are actually to major things getting in the way of a definitive triumph by Blu-ray. The first is the new dual format disc from Warner. This disc is able to carry data both in the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats in the same disc and at the same time. This dual format disc takes advantage of the fact that each format encodes its data in different layers of the disc- and therefore there's no reason that the disc can't hold data in both formats at the same time. (Of course, this also means that the total data storage capacity of the disc is much higher. Along the lines of forty gigabytes per side rather than a mere twenty five for Blu-ray or fifteen for HD-DVD.) The whole point of these discs is that they can be played on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players, so that consumers don't have to worry about which format they're buying with respect to which player they own.

The other technology that's impeding Blu-ray from having a definitive win is the dual format High Def DVD player that's recently come on the market. This device has the ability to play discs in either the Blu-ray or HD-DVD format. This is especially revolutionary because up until now, if you wanted to watch a movie on Blu-ray you needed a Blu-ray player and if you wanted to watch a movie on HD-DVD you needed an HD-DVD player. There was no crossover and that was the source of the format war. This player is even more of a threat to the triumph of either format because it costs less than simply buying one of each type of high def DVD player. However, early reports of this device indicate that it may have a lot of bugs to work out. For example, one tester claimed that it wouldn't allow him to play a 1080p Blu-ray disc in 1080p on a 1080p HDTV set. It would play it in 1080i, but considering that this unit was advertised specifically as being capable of displaying 1080p resolution, it obviously has issues. It also didn't come with an HDMI cable included in the box.

Despite these impediments, Blu-ray shows a lot of signs of being the ultimate winner of the format war, but it's just a matter of how long it takes to overcome all of these confusing hybrids between HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats.