As most people know, there is two versions of High Definition DVD's, the Blu-Ray Disc (Sony) and and the HD DVD (Toshiba). It was announced that Toshiba will now be stopping production of HD DVD, which means that the Blu-Ray disc will now step up as the new HD format.

Source found at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2264907,00.asp



But what does everyone think? I personally haven't gone to the next step and purchased a High Def DVD Player, I don't even have a High Def TV so at the moment, this just makes my choice easier.

 

 

 

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Expect Dell to start including BluRay players / burners - in their high-end systems to begin with.

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The progress in Optical storage devices has been phenomenal. Blu Ray Discs are to DVDs what DVDs where to CDs with a storage capacity of roughly 25 GB per layer. Once they become cheap and mainstream form of Optical discs, I will purchase a compatible drive.

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I'm also in the camp where buying one just isn't feasible. I mean I know I will eventually once they become the 'norm' but for now it'd be pointless for me to buy one. I'm still surprised two competing technologies came out for it since it seems like a waste on both their parts, if the sides had focused on one technology it could have been pushed harder, making the market penetration much larger (the size of both markets combined instead of the two separate ones) and thus making it much more common, leading to the technology replacing dvd's as the most expected optical medium. Ah well, should be interesting to see how the rest plays out.

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Remember the battle between VHS and Betamax Tapes? They were competing formats for almost 10 years before Betamax stopped.

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I'm agreeing with what most people are saying here. With the the news that was posted in the OP, it seems that Blu-Ray has become the most likely technology to become the standard HD format a few years from now, but I'm not prepared to buy into one yet. And just because it may be the 'better' choice, it doesn't mean it will necessarily win out. And buying a Blu-Ray drive now is just a bad idea, given the prices and the lack of content available at the moment.

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I would not say that hd-dvd is completely dead, and certainly not that blu-ray has won the high definition optical storage race. Whilst it is likely that toshiba will stop hd-dvd, it's not impossible, and several backers may even consider buying hd-dvd from toshiba to try and relaunch. Although, since it seems likely that hd-dvd is going to die, I am lucky I didn't go ahead with what I originally intended and bought a player for my xbox 360, which was attractive due to it's relatively low price.

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Unfortunately that it went down. I'm an HD-DVD camper. I loved HD DVD over Bluray, especially since it's based on DVD and also HD DVD was region free.

xboxrulz

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