The Format War

In the past 3 years, 2 new standards that supposedly will replace DVDs have emerged. Both have HD resolution, and in-movie features, like commentary and menus. Blu-Ray, backed by Sony, Apple, Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, HP, and Dell among other big time players in the electronics industry, uses an expensive laser with a special blue diode to read discs with a very high data density. It is expensive to produce as well, since the discs have low tolerances for error. The players are equally expensive because of the demand for the blue diodes. There is a Blu-Ray drive in every PS3, driving the price up for all of them, because the lasers are in short supply.
The other camp, called HD-DVD is supported by Microsoft (in the Xbox 360), Paramount, and Universal. And that's it. nevertheless, HDDVD has been faster to implement new features, and has cheaper players. But they have played dirty tricks as well. They paid both Paramount and The Weinstein Bros. over $500 million apiece to become exclusively HD-DVD. And they released ads blasting Blu-Ray for "Unreliability" and their "Confusing Standards." The only reason HD-DVD is still going is beacuse of Microsoft's support for their discs on the 360. And with Warner's recent defection to Blu-Ray, they lost 1/3rd of their movie catalog.