There has been a lot of bad news lately for the HD DVD high def DVD format in its war with the rival Blu-ray format. For example, sales of Blu-ray discs have doubled the sales of HD DVD since the beginning of the year. This has even been true for a number of titles that were published in both formats and that the HD DVD format was relying on in order to promote special features that is provides and that Blu-ray doesn't provide.

Blu Ray Player Toshiba

Both of these formats have a lot in common. Both are able to store much more data than conventional DVD's on discs that are about the same size. All of that data can then be used to store an entire full length movie in the highest available HDTV resolution on a single disc. The bonus features that come with the movies can also be stored on the disc. The Blu-ray format actually has a much larger storage capacity, by as much as twenty gigabytes per disc, but HD DVD has much more extensive interactive features.

Blu Ray Player Toshiba

A major practical difference between the two formats is price. While the discs themselves cost about the same amount, HD DVD players have typically cost about half what Blu-ray players cost given the same features. This makes the apparent success of the Blu-ray format even more surprising.

These two incompatible formats have been trying to gain an edge on each other for quite a while, and there are a number of explanations for why Sony's Blu-ray format has done better than Toshiba's HD DVD format. For one thing, there are more movie studios publishing their titles exclusively on Blu-ray than there are studios that completely rely on HD DVD. So far Universal is the only studio that only publishes on HD DVD, while a variety of studios publish their titles in both formats, and several rely exclusively on Blu-ray. As a result, there are a lot more titles available on Blu-ray, which probably accounts for its lead in sales.

Another marketing strategy that seems to have paid off was to include a Blu-ray drive in the newest version of Sony's Play Station video game platform. This Blu-ray drive makes the Play Station 3 a Blu-ray player in addition to being a video game platform. Many Play Station fans bought this device for its video gaming capabilities and are now using it to play Blu-ray discs as well.

Most recently, Disney- which backs the Blu-ray format exclusively- has announced that it will drive another nail in HD DVD's coffin by releasing what it calls a "Blu-ray Title Wave" of its classic movies in the format. A massive number of movies from Disney are expected to be released throughout 2008, and are likely to generate even more interest in the format. This move is not completely without precedent. In fact, key timing of the release of Disney movie titles in the past was instrumental in the win of VHS in the video cassette format war of the nineteen eighties and in the adoption of DVD technology in the nineties. So there is a good chance that Disney's "Blu-ray Title Wave" could contribute to a decisive success on the part of Blu-ray in the next year or so.