Just when we thought Blu-Ray was getting that important first to market advantage and that it may have a better chance of taking off, two of the biggest players around had announced their support of HD-DVD. Intel and Microsoft have committed themselves, and think that the weight of them combined will be enough to sway the market in favor of HD-DVD.
"We have a high expectation of having a single format, and that format is HD DVD," said Intel spokesman Bill Kircos.
There are various reasons cited for the preferences of these companies in choosing, such as Multi-function discs (able to have DVD content on one side that works in 'legacy' hardware), the requirement of movies to be copied to a hard drive, and the potential for more capacity. Blu-Ray will still be able to hit first to market properly starting in early next year, in 25GB and 50GB versions, though Toshiba now says 1Q 2006 will see a 15GB and later a 30GB HD-DVD release. The article mentions that perhaps now people will have to check make sure a title or software package is compatible with their drive before purchasing it, but we have seen statements from various companies such as Sony that they will be producing drives that support both formats. In the end I actually believe the two competing formats will be good for the consumer, and perhaps in a year or so we can all have 100GB backup X-DVDs lying around.