Some of you may not have noticed, but a war has recently
ended. The war for high definition optical disc dominance, that is. The fight
between Blu-ray and HD DVD ended in February after Toshiba, HD DVD’s main
supporter, announced they would no longer develop, manufacture or market HD DVD
players. It only took two days for Universal and Paramount Pictures to get the
hint. Joining Warner Brothers, Columbia, 20th Century Fox and Buena Vista, the
two conglomerates stated they would now solely back Blu-ray, a declaration that
will perhaps soon send consumers’ own DVDs the way of HD DVD, and previously,
their videocassettes.

But before you head off and buy that trendy new Blu-ray DVD
player, you may want to first educate yourself on exactly what you’re buying
into.

According to Blu-ray.com, Blu-ray gets its name from the
blue-violet laser used to read and write its discs. This laser has a shorter
wavelength than the red laser that standard DVDs use, resulting in six times
the storage capacity. Theoretically, this expansive memory storage makes
Blu-ray the perfect partner for high-definition televisions, but here is also
the caveat — Blue-ray only works with HD TVs.

Unfortunately, even if you already have an HD TV, you will
still need to drop a lot of cash to get this dynamic experience. The least
expensive Blu-ray player runs around $360, and movies cost about $35 each.
Compare this to the price range of $15 to $20 for regular DVDs and the
abundance of standard DVD players on the market for less than $100 — which do
already have the ability to upscale a standard DVD so it looks much sharper on
an HD screen — and you begin to see why the studios are so anxious to push
this expensive new technology forward. And if the price difference isn’t
discouraging enough, you will need at least a 30-inch TV before you even begin
to notice a difference between the two formats.

Another major concern is the relatively limited selection of
movie titles currently available on Blu-ray. But this is quickly changing. With
HD DVD out of the picture, Blu-ray has full access to all of the Big Six major
film studios and their subsidiaries, effectively making it the new high-def
standard, and will likely start increasing their selection dramatically. The
television industry is also getting in on the action, and so are major retail
stores such as Wal-Mart and Target, which have recently started cutting Blu-ray
prices now that their major competition is gone.

Rental giants Blockbuster and Netflix have also decided to
jump on the bandwagon. Both companies announced they will now exclusively
feature Blu-ray discs as the default format on their websites, and last week,
Blockbuster officially announced their plan to offer Blu-ray at more than 4,000
locations across the United States and Canada.

With all this focus on Blu-ray, one can’t help but wonder
what will happen to the old DVDs. Blu-ray Disc Association European chairman
Frank Simonis said, “Within three years it will just be Blu-ray,”
though DVDs do not appear to be going anywhere just yet. Almost every Blu-ray
player is equipped with backward compatibility so they can still play your DVDs
and audio CDs. Studio heads have confirmed the DVD’s status quo as well,
claiming they will continue to release movies in both DVD and Blu-ray format
–?for now.

There is no questioning the fact that Blu-ray has had a huge
cultural impact over the past year, and it will continue to do so. But if you
don’t want to restart your movie collection and pile your DVDs next to your old
VHS tapes or are uninterested in the considerable initial investment Blu-ray
requires, DVDs remain a perfectly viable option. But that may change in the
coming years, if Blu-ray continues to storm the market and industries keep
enhancing technology to develop even higher quality products with equally
higher prices. Only time will tell.