Remember back in the late 70's and early 80's there was the war between VHS and Betamax. When you went into video rental stores they had two different sections for the two formats. People had to choose which format player to purchase, and back then I think they were between $500 and $1,000, so it was a big deal. Finally VHS won out and the movie studios started cranking out the movies and made a ton of money.

Well there is another format war underway. This time it is for the format that will replace DVD's. The two contenders are Blu-Ray and HD-DVD and each has its backers.

What makes this interesting is that until on side surrenders the whole market for the new formats will be at a standstill. Consumers don't want to spend a lot of money on movies in one format if it is possible that the other format will win and there collection will be unplayable on future machines. Studios won't want invest in stamping equipment in either format because if their choice is wrong they will have wasted a lot of money.

The two formats are HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The advantage of HD-DVD is that they can be produced on the machines that currently make DVD's with only small and inexpensive modifications. They hold about twice as much as current DVD's.

Blu-Ray can hold about three times as much as current DVD's, but they require totally different and very expensive machines to produce the disks.

Below is a list of which companies back which format.

Current DVD's – 8.5 GB per side

HD-DVD – 15 GB per side
HBO Home Video
NEC
New Line Cinema
Paramount Pictures
Toshiba
Universal Pictures
Warner Brothers

Blu-Ray – 25 GB per side
Apple
Dell
HP
Panasonic
Philips
Pioneer
Sony
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures and Television