Earlier this year, Warner Brothers announced it would cease releasing HD-DVD titles in favor of Blu-Ray. Then some major retailers and even NetFlix announced they had dropped the HD-DVD format. Now Toshiba, originator of the format, has thrown in the towel. After March, HD-DVD players will be no more. Microsoft has not announced any imminent plans to discontinue its Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, but give them a day or so to sort things out. The sad thing is that HD-DVD actually looked and sounded slightly better, on the whole, but Blu-Ray players were typically more reliable. (What killed it for us was when Happy Feet wouldn't play through due to a glitch in the player firmware - even after several months of updates!) Of course, after the BetaMax fiasco of the '80s, you knew Sony wouldn't give this one up without a fight - and by putting the emphasis on reliability, they finally came out on top. So go out and get a PS3, if only to play movies. You sure as hell won't find too many great games for it, and there are still a few gotchas (such as mandatory 20-minutes installs) for the good ones...
Like most people with their ear to the ground I saw this coming. I don't own many DVDs and zero Blu-ray or HD-DVD. I wonder about next generation systems. We have already seen the many discs included with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Will Microsoft use blu-ray in their next gen system? I feel that they have too. If they do not, I may reconsider them as my favorite.