Author: Scott Piercy

Editor: Nigel Woodford 

Having just come off the tail end of CES 2007, it's quite clear the industry is really planning on making 2007 the "Year Of High Definition." CES 2007 was awash in HD-DVD and BlueRay players, and wide screen plasma and LCD screens supporting true 1080p resolutions were everywhere. To get the best use of these wide screen High Definition displays you naturally need High Definition content. Thus begins the new format war just like VHS vs. Betamax, The Republic vs. The Empire (oops sorry, wrong story).

This is a battle waged for market dominance with much of the entertainment industry divided into separate camps, a few industry players adopting both formats, and even fewer taking a cautious "wait and see" approach. Because of the economic factors involved (in our opinion largely driven by pure greed and foolishness) both formats also abound with more advanced copy protection schemes than were utilized with DVD-ROM, and that nasty word known as Digital Rights Management.

There are significant differences from a technical standpoint between these two competing industry formats, and an equal number of similarities. Let's take a quick overview at the highlights of both formats, before we begin to share what we think of them ourselves.