High-def format war might not be won in living rooms

This whole Blu-ray vs HD DVD thing is a topic that we here at HD Beat cover a lot. Truthfully, it is an important topic as many of you are anxious to buy ether HD DVD or Blu-ray but can't decide on a format. As much as we cover it here, and discuss it on our weekly podcast, the home entertainment market might not have a lot to do with who emerges as the winner. Studio support and interactive features will probably not have anything to do with who walks away from this thing but rather who is better supported on the computer side of it.

Think of the sheer volume of computers that are sold. Whoever can get their recordable drives into a general market computer will...well...win. Toshiba once again has a huge head start as they already have put non-recordable drives in their own laptops. Oh, and you can buy one right now from a major electronic store. Acer is the next one to get into the HD DVD laptop game and has one on the way. A major manufacturer of both HD DVD and Blu-ray has indicated to Reuters that, yes, Sony is about six months behind Toshiba.

While Blu-ray has great studio support right now, that may change. The computer industry is dramatically bigger than the home entertainment industry and will have a bigger impact on the format war.