HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray

The end of this format war does not necessarily mean that there are clear winners and losers in this case. Stephen Dubner over at the Freakonomics blog has a great post with expert opinions on what this means for Toshiba, Sony, and the consumers of next-gen disc players.

I would say that, knowing some of the differences between the two formats, Blu-Ray was not the one I wanted to see win. For one, HD-DVD was region-free, meaning that if I bought a player in Chicago, I would be able to watch any HD-DVDs from around the world (whereas this is not the case with Blu-Ray). Sony’s copy protection is also notoriously invasive (remember this?), although there was a much-publicized cracking of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD encryption code. Nonetheless, I guess there is was just not meant to be a choice in media formats (DVD, VHS, CD, etc etc…), so I just hope that the BDA irons out their specifications for Blu-Ray soon, so that everybody can eventually start to benefit from the end of this long and costly format war.