Friday, January 05, 2007

High definition video disc format war becoming irrelevent?

It's time for the huge, annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and there have been a couple of announcements coming out of it indicating that the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray may turn out to be a non-event, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. LG has announced a player that can handle both formats, and Warner Brothers has announced it will produce discs containing both formats.

The LG machine is coming out a lot sooner than I anticipated (assuming this really does come out--it wouldn't be the first time an electronics manufacturer has announced "vaporware," something that is never actually produced). I would certainly go for a dual format player--though LG (formerly Goldstar) is not exactly a high-end manufacturer. I'd wait a few more months to get a player made by a higher quality company.

But I suspect it might be a while, if ever, before I can find a single machine that plays HD-DVDs, Blu-rays, my DVD-Audios and my SACDs--not that I have all that many discs in the latter two formats. But I do have some, so I may have to keep my current machine, a Samsung 941, in my system. I got it as an interim player, waiting for the high definition formats to come out and perhaps stabilize.

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