Why HD-DVD Will Win

My son got the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for Christmas this year and we watched our first movie the other night (The Searchers; his choice). The difference between this and a standard DVD is incredible.

I think that HD-DVD will win in the format wars for a couple reasons. First, the Sony Playstation 3 will not be as popular as earlier versions of the console due to the lack of compelling games, so there will be far fewer Blu-ray players in the market. This will give movie studios the incentive to support both Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD formats. The second reason is the cost of the Xbox player; for $200, I think there will be several million who will put these units next to their HDTV’s next year before Playstation ships in large numbers.

Then again, I could be wrong and the porn industry could determine the next DVD standard like they did with video tape. Time will tell…