Anyone who follows the HD Formats (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) will know about the various contracts that companies have been under since their introduction several years ago. It has been a fairly bitter war, and it may be coming to a close as the contracts which bind the publishing companies such as Universal to using one format over the other expire.

The buzz lately has been that Blu-Ray is pulling ahead, and HD-DVD could be pretty much out of the running as far as this goes. Personally though, I wouldn’t discount HD-DVD… It seems like with the way things are now, there’s plenty of room for multiple formats. Perhaps for consumer media distribution Blu-Ray will be king for the next fifteen minutes until something else comes along, but I could definitely see uses for both formats in the propagation of video games, and general data transfers.

Companies such as Sony have long been backing the competition, which has a vested interest in the Blu-Ray format as it is the primary means of media distribution for their Playstation 3 Video Game/Media platform. Disney, Fox, and Lionsgate are also supporters of Blu-Ray.

When you break it down though, it really doesn’t matter for consumers which format becomes the most popular. Unless you foolishly went out and bought an expensive media solution right as these things come out, which you should have learned by now is never a good idea. Devices such as this Combo Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive could be used to create a Media PC for either format, while also letting you play stored movies from the hard-drive.

And of course, as always, you can view examples of Exclusivity Agreements on Agreements.RealDealDocs.com.

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