In the eighties I had a BetaMax Video Player and a stack of Beta tapes. Pity that the rest of the world had sided with VHS and won. I made an informed decision. Beta was better, but funnily enough that fact was not important. Interestingly it was the support of the adult film industry that tipped the scales in favor of VHS. Who'd have thought that I would be financially punished for my lack of interest in porn?

Not to make the same mistake twice I held off purchasing my new DVD Burner until the current day battle between HD DVD and BluRay was concluded. As with all two sided battles both teams decided that their technology would not be compatible with their opponents. If you purchased HD DVD then it wouldn't work with BluRay and visa versa. It's fine for big corporations to take their bat and ball and go home if play doesn't go their way, but it the little people like us who make the wrong decision and end up having to buy two units instead of just one good one or worse still a hybrid. Those units that sit under your TV announcing to the world that you have commitment issues. This time our two heavy weights were Toshiba and Sony. Once again industry support provided the victor the spoils with BluRay emerging as the new medium and Sony winning the day.

So what is BluRay (Blue - Optical Ray) and HD DVD

CD's and DVD's components utilize a red laser to read information encoded on discs. Currently up to 4.7GB can be stored on a standard disc with a maximum of 8.5GB on a dual layer disc. BluRay and HDDVD are based on the same technology and utilize a blue/violet laser which has a shorter wave length. This permits the disc to store more compressed data. Using this technology HD DVD discs can hold 15GB and BluRay a whopping 25GB. Given that dual layer technology is imminent in both formats you can comfortably double that storage capacity. In fact Sony have boasted multilayer discs in the future which could see their disc capacity up to 200GB. That's huge!

The other important advantage of the new discs is their ability to store high definition (HD) images. Current DVD's can hold only standard definition (SD) given their limited storage capacity. HD is approximately five times the definition of SD. This has been the reason for the interest and support of the movie industry. The big boys Walt Disney, Buena Vista, Fox, MGM and Sony BMG, announced BluRay as their preferred format with Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers sitting on the fence and supporting both.

One advantage of BluRay is the scratch resistant backing made of a clear polymer as compared to standard DVD and HD DVD's which use a clear plastic. Now that is good news. The other is the new anti-piracy measures which includes a digital watermark, Advanced Access Content System (similar to current CSS) High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection and BD+ technology.

If you have already committed to a HD DVD purchase don't despair it will be supported for the next few years, and that's a long, long time in technology, by that time there will probably be something bigger and better and another battle being fought. And like my BetaMax in the eighties, your HD DVD player will make an expensive way of holding a door open, however, unlike me you will not be able to use porn as an excuse.