The utterly pointless battle between Sony's Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD high definition movie formats will become even more utterly pointless -- and even more expensive! -- with developments anticipated for the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES). According to Gizmodo, LG Electronics has "announced that it will launch the world's first dual-format high-definition disc player, capable of playing both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD content." And according to The New York Times, Warner Brothers "plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the rival DVD technologies."
Fantastic! Soon we might be able to pay more for dual-format players, insert our more expensive dual-format Total HD disc, and then decide whether we want to watch the Blu-ray or HD DVD versions which, by the way, have been encoded with exactly the same video and sound codecs.
Problem solved! Finally, two bunches of manufacturers too greedy, too arrogant or simply too stupid to agree a common format will be able to trouser the extra cash without, perhaps, suffering the consequences they deserve....
Or maybe not. Does anyone think these kludges are going to destroy the popularity of BitTorrent?
