The Truth about High Def DVDs

A couple months back, I bought a Playstation 3 in part to upscale DVDs to near high def and to play high definition DVDs. At that point, and even now, there has been a format war between HD DVD (Toshiba) and Blu-ray (Sony). Blu-ray has sold more discs but Toshiba has sold more single-purpose players (not counting the PS3, which if counted, hands the player race to Sony). They also had pulled in most of the studios to their side. So I bet on Blu-ray.

Looks like I was right. Sony just scooped Toshiba to sign Warner Bros., the biggest DVD content studio, to an exclusive Blu-ray only deal. It's over.

Some say that this is all moot because we'll all be downloading movies to our TVs and DVDs will go the way of vinyl LPs. Not so fast. The American internet is too slow to handle standard definition TV, much less high def. Video on demand has not taken off for standard def and that is the closest analog to downloadable movies. No one wants to be in the middle of a thriller and then hit internet lag, or worse yet, wait three hours to download a two hour movie.