The format war is over! When Toshiba dropped the failing HD DVD format, nearly all of the platform's exclusive backers followed suite, and quickly abandoned ship(the only holdout being DreamWorks animation.) This final blow ended the nearly two-year long "next-gen" format war between war, between HD DVD and Sony backed Blu-Ray. Now Blu-Ray stands alone with no incentive to drop player prices or improve quality. Just think, what would the high def landscape look like if there had never been a war. Would Blu-Ray have ever had incentive to move past those horrible initial titles and improve image quality? The BD camp is still sorting out this whole Java mess(who knows anything about a "player profile?"). But for now, Sony stands victorious, clenched fist, over the recently deceased, rapidly decaying HD DVD. But wait just one minute. Bloomberg news reports:


"Relatively few consumers are planning to make the transition from DVDs to high-definition HD DVD or Blu-ray, according to a survey by NPD Group. The researchers said that among owners of HDTV sets, seven out of 10 say they see no need to purchase high-definition players, maintaining that they are satisfied with the quality of their current players. "one of the main challenges for the next-generation" format, NPD Group senior entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick told Bloomberg News, 'is you have a product out there that is pretty darn good in consumers' eyes.'"

The transition to hd media hasn't been a quick one, and the format war did nothing to help. But when Joe six pack is ready to make the switch, will Blu-Ray still be king of the mountain?