Amazingly quickly the format battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray has reached a conclusion. Anyone following the saga will have seen numerous reports of the demise of HD-DVD after Netflix, BestBuy and WalMart had made statements that they would be backing the Blu-ray format. The writing was on the wall, and many news agencies jumped the gun before Toshiba had made their official announcement – which they have now made today: February 19th.
Hopefully this works out well for the consumer now that there is only one choice. Currently Blu-ray players are around $400, and the media is still at a premium price over DVDs. It is my opinion that the players need to fall to the sub $200 range, and the media needs to average $20 a disc.
The next threat to Blu-ray will be downloaded content. Both low-fi content such as YouTube as well as hi-def downloads via services like iTunes (with Apple TV).
Loving your site. Keep up the great work.
Regarding your comment on downloading of HD content. I don’t see the content download being an open medium. With ISP’s implementing download caps, people will keep an eye on what they download. Up here in Canada, there are caps. They range from 60GB to 100GB.