In the recent format wars between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, it seems as though Blu-ray has won another point. The humongous chain, Wal-mart, has decided to phase out HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray discs and players. The two formats have been battling it out over the past few months, confusing consumers and forming rivalries. Even videogames have gotten into the mix with Sony's PS3 coming with Blu-ray support and Microsoft's Xbox360's HD-DVD add-on. I would assume that the recent format war is similar to the old VHS vs. Betamax wars from before I was born. From my knowledge, both format wars: confused consumers, had similar yet incompatible formats, and resulted in early adopters of the losing format getting nothing but a useless video player. With corporations as big as Microsoft and Sony backing these two formats, this format war could have gone on quite a bit longer, but luckily, studios and retailers have chosen sides relatively quickly, with all but a few of the studios supporting Blu-Ray. The loss of Wal-mart as a distributor should cut HD-DVD almost completely out of the race and, hopefully, end this format war forever.
Wal-Mart chooses Blu-Ray 
The differences between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are actually fairly insignificant for the average consumer. Blu-Ray has a good deal of extra storage space (~20GB), but it doesn't really show extraordinarily well in the actual footage quality. Instead, the extra space generally goes to more extras, language tracks, and other bonus features. Overall, the biggest difference between the two formats is simply which companies and organizations stand to win the most money from the format's success.
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD vs. DVD Comparison
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