Whilst those who were watching could see the HD-DVD ship sink in slow motion, the final battle has been lost by HD-DVD.

Hours after Toshiba pulled the plug on HD-DVD, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, moved to Blu-Ray. Now, with all six major Hollywood studios on board, as well as manufacturer support from Apple, Dell, LG and others, Blu-ray is the new effective standard for HD content.

Even if HD-DVD was a technically inferior format, it’s still a huge shame to see it sink. That said, the final blow - I think - did not rest with Toshiba’s support, the various marketing campaigns, or the support of studios. The final nail in HD-DVD’s coffin was that Blu-Ray can potentially hold up to about 100GB of media (on a 3-layer disc), whilst HD-DVD banked on using its connections from DVD to lure both users and producers in, with a less-than-amazing potential 51GB (again, on a 3-layer disc).

Those of us who watched from the sidelines as HD-DVD fell in slow motion understand that they made a valiant attempt to conquer the HD content world, but simply lost to the better format, Blu-Ray.

So, no more combo players, supporting both formats, no deciding which to buy, the standard has been decided - HD now belongs to Blu-Ray, but for how long?

Graham