Apparently there’s “very little chance” of reaching an agreement on a unified format but NEC is creating a multiformat DVD player that will play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Not that I’m convinced that we really are so desperate for HD, especially when a whole chunk of the extra capacity goes to housing DRM (even Bill Gates labels the extra lengths taken by Blu-Ray as “anti-consumer”… apparently why he’s supporting HDTV not Microsoft’s desire to screw Sony in their “battle for the living room”). But while this is good for consumers in the short term in that they don’t have to choose between formats, it just means prolonging the war and is unlikely to encourage people to switch their movie collections wholesale because one or none may win out rendering that investment as useless as your video collection is now. If there’s no incentive for a wholesale upgrade then it is unlikely that the sweet spot of demand will be reached to bring the prices down which is necessary to make the market viable. And while we’re all waiting round for a decision to be made and prices to come down, someone will come up with a better technology. Here’s hoping anyway, it would serve them all right.

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