Why I feel bad for consumers right now

If you have been following the war between the two high definition DVD formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, you might have started to get a strong feeling that the war will soon be over. Just about every time news breaks about the competing formats, it seems that HD DVD takes another technology knife in the back. Like the recent announcement from Netflix that it will only rent Blu-ray high definition DVDs.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray is the modern day equivalent of the Beta vs. VHS in the 80s. And it’s looking right now like Blu-ray is more of the VHS and HD DVD is more of the Beta.

So why do I feel bad for consumers? Because HD DVD players are still on the market. And they have been drastically cut in price. Take for example the Circuit City ad in last Sunday’s paper. It’s advertising an HD DVD player for $199 (they used to be $800-$1000) that includes 7 HD DVD movies. You see what they’re doing don’t you? They are unloading all of their HD DVD players and movies for two reasons. The first is to make a last dying attempt to make HD DVD the new high definition standard. The second is to make sure they have unloaded all of their inventory in case the first reason doesn’t pan out.

My advice is simple. I still recommend staying away from either format right now. You’ll have plenty of time to buy those new high definition DVDs when one format is declared the official champion. But if you just can’t wait, I would seriously look at Blu-ray and seriously avoid HD DVD.