Dear Tech In-Law,
I read a recent newspaper article about how the blu-ray format has won the war and the HD DVDs will be going away. I saw an ad for a really cheap HD DVD player and wondered if this would be a slow process with enough new HD DVDs coming out still that it makes sense to buy one. What do you think?
Rachel


Dear Rachel,
The only good thing about a format war is that ultimately in the end the consumer wins. While it's going on it is frustrating to try and make the decision on what to buy and the vast majority of consumers will wait until it's over and decided. Thankfully this is one that was over quickly! While there were some plans in place as early as 2000 we did not see the first players arrive until 2006. There was a lot of speculation during the first year about which format would win out but it was clear within the last year that blu-ray was going to come out on top.

As far as buying a player goes, yes, you can find a really, really good deal on a HD DVD player right now. If you are buying it though to take advantage of the high definition qualities and plan on using it for some time then I can't recommend it. It's a smarter move to go ahead and make the jump to blu-ray as from this point forward it will be the physical media format of choice. Anything up to this point that was HD DVD only will be transferred over to the blu-ray format as well.

There is one caveat with this advice, I would actually wait to buy a blu-ray "profile 2" player and these will be hitting the shelves by the summer (or you could buy a Playstation 3 which supports this profile now). Basically it just means you will be able to connect to the internet and take advantage of downloadable content which means your player could continue to be improved with software updates much like DVR systems and gaming consoles today. So if you've got a pretty flat screen and you want to take advantage of this new format and quality, then go blue, or I mean "blu"!