Last year, I decided to become a “late early adopter” by taking the jump to high-definition entertainment. I upgraded my equipment, including a Toshiba HD DVD player. While cognizant of the HD format wars, I went ahead with HD DVD because the equipment was better priced for the mass market. I thought thought that due to pure economics, this format would win despite its technical inferiority to Blu-Ray. I decided to hedge my bet and asked my girlfriend for a Blu-Ray player for the holidays.

Recently, more movie studios have agreed to support Blu-Ray exclusively, so despite HD DVD’s connectivity and interactivity features — none of which were ready on Blu-Ray — people seem to be declaring that Blu-Ray has won the format war. Shortly after this announcement, the Blu-Ray camp announced that players on the market now (except for the one built into the Playstation 3 game console) will not be able to play most future Blu-Ray discs thanks to technological advances that won’t be backwards compatible. Even though I thought I was covering all my bases, I lost the format war. The consumers always lose.

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