CES 2007: Blu-ray declare a slightly premature victory

It's a real battle of the formats here at CES, with HD-DVD and Blu-ray wrestling / rockpaperscissors / monopoly matches on the hour, every hour to declare the winner here at CES. Well, not quite, but it should happen like that.

Today though, the Blu-ray association released a statement and "declared its victory as the premiere high definition DVD format of choice". Interesting, bearing in mind that more HD-DVD units have been sold than Blu-ray (partly because they were first out there, though).

Blu-ray attribute their 'victory' on the PS3 being able to play their discs, but HD-DVD also have a few things to crow about.

For instance, HD-DVDs are able to play on normal DVD players, so people can start to build up a collection without making the investment of a still expensive player. They're also not doing the expected slacking the content, bearing in mind there's only two of the major studios behind them. There are already 260 HD-DVD movies available, with another 300 being released over the next few months. Blu-ray so far has 170 titles.

It was announced yesterday that HD-DVD players would also all be shipped with ethernet connections, which will allow you to download movie trailers from the internet. Another reason to choose HD-DVD.

But do we need a winner? With LG's announcement that they're shipping players that play both formats, maybe the battle is over before it's really begun.

Check out this video of some Blu-ray Blues Brothers. They've cleverly changed the lyrics from 'soul man' to 'blu-ray man'. Genius.

[Picture courtesy of Technabob]

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