A few weeks ago I wrote about the format wars for high def DVDs with Blu-ray and HD-DVD battling it out. At that time it looked like the war might go on and on, but now it is over. 

Blu-ray has won. In early January, 2008, Warner Brothers, who had previously supported both formats, announced that they would back only Blu-ray.  That left the HD-DVD camp with only two studios producing DVDs in their format. Then Netflix, the online DVD rental service, said they would only stock Blu-ray discs and Best Buy announced that Blu-ray was its preferred format.  The death knoll rang even louder when Wal-Mart announced that they would stock only Blu-ray DVDs.  In mid February, Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp succumbed.  

As you may know, these formats are incompatible. You can't play a HD-DVD disk on a Blu-ray player and you can't play a Blu-ray disk on an HD-DVD player. So don't think about buying an HD-DVD player when the fire sales starts unless you want something to keep your Betamax company in the attic. If you were waiting to buy that high definition DVD player until you could get one that would be good for years to come, your time has come....buy a Blu-ray player. There will be plenty of movies available. Since it will be the only format, every hi-def movie released in the future will be in the Blu-ray format.

If you are  wondering who had the biggest influence on the end to the format wars and how they compared to the VHS-Betamax battle of the 80s, check our my opinion on my blog .