HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray

[whoiam]

Technical point - HD-DVD uses (or used) a blue laser diode to read the disks, same as blu-ray. So they're both blue.

Personally, I was pretty much always in favour of Blu-ray - not because I cared in the slightest about the movie format, but because the ultimate plan for the format is an 8-layer ~200GB disk. The chance to backup my entire media collection on a mere disk or two is something I've been looking forwards to for a long time. So in that respect, it's a shame HD-DVD folded this early - if they'd been deadlocked longer, then there would be more incentive to boost the blu-ray capacity...

((At the present time: Blu-ray max capacity, 2 layers, 50GB. HD-DVD max capacity, 3 layers, 45GB. Still a small stack of disks to do a backup))

Of course, it's a good thing on the whole 'soon all movies will be on the same format' front.

As for the console war, I don't think it'll change much. Expect MS to (quietly) announce a blu-ray replacement for their add-on HD-DVD drive in a few months, when the last couple of studios sign up for Blu-ray.