It's almost two years since HD-DVD launched and it feels like an episode of ever decreasing circles now...

Dual format players are not the norm and are far from it. As some of us predicted, they have so far proven to be too complicated to get working properly. The 3 efforts so far have probably delivered the 3 worst HD-DVD players (by quite some margin) and likewise the 3 worst BD players, by a much smaller margin.

My own preference from the outset was for Blu-ray to win out, not so much based on technical merit, but on a deep mis-trust of Microsoft.

MS are unfortunately, very canny. What they invested in HD-DVD was all portable elsewhere should it not go their way. By providing VC-1. and interactive technology, if HD-DVD were to fail, VC-1 and HDi would still do very nicely thank-you in VoD and IPTV circles. If nothing else, HD-DVD would be a great way of proving that both can deliver technically.

In some ways their desire to MS the world is their un-doing. Take Media Center. Great idea, and to a point a great product. When it was a standalone effort no-one really got that into it, so MS use normal tactics by making it part of Vista. However, they missed the real reason people don't use it as much as they should. MS only support MS formats. If you want to play non-MS files, they expect you to while your life away with their Media Encoder SDK converting all your non-MS media.

IF they either included support for a wide range of non-MS formats OR made it easy for others to extend Media Center to stream non-MS formats then people (me included) would love it. Ditto the 360 extender, allow a much more flexible no. of formats and even allow a PS3 to act as one and everyone would want to use MC.

It's not just MC. Take Exchange 2007, some of you may use it. 2007 now has a fully functional web interface providing all the features of the Outlook client.... as long of course as you use IE... Should you choose to use a non-MS browser then certain features don't work... The world is great as long as it's ONLY MS...

CE manufacturers on the other hand have a good track record. They gave us CD and DVD, didn't tie us over a barrel over how you could use them and created a huge ecosystem that anyone could join in to give a choice in players from a few quid to 10's of thousands of pounds.

They've done this for years. Yes they invent other formats that don't achieve the success of CD and DVD, but in those cases they get the message and try something else.

My money is with them. They've earnt my trust and always delivered choice. I use their formats because I want to and we get flexibility in return. I use MS products because I have no real choice and feel coerced down certain routes. You actively seek out routes to avoid using MS products if you can.

Ah, but what about big bad Sony, the company everyone loves to hate as much as MS? In some ways I feel sorry for them. To me Sony are and always will be the Japanese Electonics giant. Unfortunately they went and bought an American content company called Columbia. One spends it's time coming up with wonderful electronic useful gadgets, the other spends it's time trying to find ways of stopping you from enjoying it's content on them like all other American content makers. (Is it still only EMI who provide DRM free iTunes downloads?)

It's the Sony content arm people hate, and after the rootkit fiasco quite rightly too. But I think people quite like the Japanese electronics arm. Maybe it's a culture thing?

So, in a roundabout way that's why I prefer Blu-ray. No mention of space, bitrates, cost, MPEG-2....

I just don't trust Microsoft, they already have one effective monopoly, I don't want my home entertainment to become another one. The content providers will do what they do regardless of platform. They can choose to use region coding or not, BD+ or not... Fox have always been gits in that respect. None of them though could lock you down as tightly as MS could if they controlled your PC and your home entertainment. Sony's content and Electronic arms are too dis-organised to make any benefit count, they are after all really two different companies.

I just want the format spat over now. Enough's enough. I'm glad Blu-ray looks like having the upper hand, and just want to enjoy films again without having to work out who will release it where...