Sad day for technology buffs and the general consumer. Blu-Ray is a proprietary format that will be controlled by Sony and its affiliates. HD-DVD is not and more importantly uses current technology greatly reducing the price of discs, factories for example would not have to do major retooling to produce them. Quality wise they are practically the same, the standard Blu-ray discs has more space but its actually more than is needed and HD-DVD did release a comparable disc.TOKYO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Paramount studios is poised to drop its support of the high-definition DVD (HD DVD) format after Warner Bros studio said it would back the competing Blu-ray format, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Once HD-DVD is out of the picture this is going to leave sony in the position to charge whatever they want, it's my understanding they are actually losing money on the current crop of discs because they are subsidizing the price so they could compete with HD-DVD prices.
For those of you with HD-DVD player you now own what amounts to a Betamax player.