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You can however buy movies on both formats right now, but this brings with it a few more questions. Questions like why is the Blu-ray line-up so damn awful – let’s face it, no one should have to put up with watching SWAT, Stealth or Hitch, high definition or not! If we were going to judge the formats on launch titles alone then HD DVD would win hands down, just on the basis of Serenity, Apollo 13 and The Bourne Supremacy – none of them absolute classics, but compared to what Blu-ray has to offer, they’re movie gold.

But the launch line-up isn’t the only problem facing Blu-ray, the quality of the discs is also a little suspect. Early movies are only pressed on single layer discs and use the MPEG-2 codec, while first generation HD DVD discs are dual layer and use the VC-1 codec. So despite the fact that Blu-ray offers higher capacity per layer, the first generation of movie discs offer less capacity than their HD DVD rivals – 25GB compared to 30GB on a dual layer HD DVD. When you add up the lower (current) capacity on Blu-ray and the less efficient MPEG-2 codec, then it comes as no surprise that early HD DVD discs look better. However, it’s also worth remembering that the next round of Blu-ray discs will both adopt the VC-1 codec and span two layers, so the quality situation could easily reverse.

Also, the fact that eight-layer Blu-ray discs with 200GB of storage have already made it to the engineering sample stage is also promising for the format. But one must also ask the question of how much space is necessary for optimum high definition quality. With better quality and more efficient codecs now available, do we really need ridiculous amounts of storage space to achieve the best possible quality? Perhaps the DVD forum is right and 30GB is enough for optimum high definition picture quality, but then are you limiting the amount of extras available? Perhaps you are, but then is it that much of a chore to have a second disc with the extras? We’ve happily accepted that method on standard DVDs for years after all.

Regardless of all these points, could I recommend any one format to anyone? Not really. Everything is still far too up in the air. I’m seeing multiple notebooks and Media Center PCs with a mixture of HD DVD and Blu-ray drives built-in, and of course the (eventual) European launch of the PlayStation 3 will put a Blu-ray player into a great many homes. Then you’ve got Microsoft about to launch the HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360, so there are some pretty heavyweight launches behind both formats. But the unwavering support of big names in the consumer electronics and IT industries for both formats just makes it even harder to predict which format will go the distance.

Of course the obvious answer is hardware that can read and write both Blu-ray and HD DVD media, but despite all the major players periodically holding talks to discuss a hybrid standard, they always seem to break down before anything is resolved. In fact, the whole unification situation leave’s me with a distinct feeling of déjà vu. It wasn’t too many years ago that I was reporting on the competing DVD-RAM, DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW standards, with both sides of the fence offering little optimism when it came to hybrid hardware. But now you’d be hard pushed to find hardware that wasn’t compatible with each and every DVD format.

There have been a few possible rays of light though, the brightest of which was Ricoh’s announcement that it had developed a laser that could read both Blu-ray and HD DVD media back in July. Hopefully this will amount to something and I’ll start to hear rumours of hybrid drives and players sometime in 2007, but I’m not going to hold my breath. All I will say is that it’s going to take a pretty brave early adopter to commit to one format or the other. My advice would be to hold off on replacing your DVD movies with high definition versions and see how things play out over the next few months.

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