I was in the Halifax Future Shop store yesterday for my weekly gawk at tech toys. Though I've been following some of the new format war of HD DVD vs Blu-Ray, I haven't been paying too much attention to it since a) I don't really have a budget to be looking at high-definition DVD players right now, and b) my 6 year old high-def TV doesn't have an HDMI input so I can't watch the damn things anyway (I'll save that rant for another day).

Still, I thought it was interesting to see a rather large Blu-Ray DVD rack occupying prime DVD real-estate next to the "new releases" area of Future Shop. I was quite impressed, actually. And though I didn't look very hard, I did not see any similar display for HD DVD disks. In fact, I didn't see ANY HD DVD disks, though like I said I didn't look exhaustively through the entire DVD section.

So, it would appear as though Blu Ray has drawn first blood in the format wars (in Canada, anyway). Mind you, it's still a pretty weak strike, featuring such smash hits as Stealth and Species. Who the hell decides what catalog titles get released on new formats anyway? I think it must just be a chimpanzee throwing darts at movie posters.

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Posted 09-03-2006 10:57 AM by Andre Perusse