Blu Ray and HD DVD were two new formats that were in a format war with each other to become a high definition replacement for the DVD Standard. In 2008 Toshiba, who backed the HD DVD standard gave in and announced the end of HD-DVD production leaving Blu Ray owners happy and HD DVD owners feeling the way Betamax owners probably felt in the 1980’s.

Both formats are fairly similar in the fact the both use a traditional DVD sized disc that is read with a blue laser rather than a red laser like CD and DVD players. This blue laser is capable of being more sharply focused on the disc meaning the tracks can be placed closer together fitting more data onto the disc.

Blu Ray is capable of fitting 25 GB of data on a single layer of the disc while HD-DVD is capable of 15GB per layer, when used in dual layer format a Blu Ray disc can fit 50 GB of data compared to a standard DVD at 4.7GB. The benefit of all this extra space is that movies can now fit on a disc with not only a lot less compression but also with high definition video meaning some of the best looking and life like pictures you may ever see.

HD-DVD did get off to a good start and sold reasonably well with Toshiba announcing in Jan 2008 that a total of 1 million unit sold in the USA alone. Unfortunately about this time Warner Bros announced they were to end production of HD-DVD discs that led to many major retailers deciding the future was in Blu-Ray. Because of all this Toshiba announced in Feb 2008 the end of HD-DVD player production, at the time there were only 386 HD DVD titles released in the USA and now with production of players and discs halted the future is looking bright for Blu-Ray with 650 titles available as at July 2008.

Fortunately both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players that have been released are compatible with standard DVD. Both formats were also designed so movie manufactures can put a standard DVD on the same disc as the Blu-Ray. This means you can watch your hybrid disc on any DVD player but only in high definition on a Blu-Ray player although no hybrid discs have been released yet. The good thing about the backward compatibility is if you did invest in a HD-DVD player you can still use it for standard DVD’s in the future. Many people took advantage of this when players were being sold out cheap at the end of the formats life, picking up a high definition player for not much more than a normal DVD player. They then took advantage of the HD-DVD titles that were being sold off cheep too.