DVD Wars are coming!

This sounds like a big mess that I am going to try to miss all together.

Here's the problem: Both camps are shooting themselves in the foot before they get to the starting line. Consumers already were faced with the prospect of mass confusion, thanks to two next-generation DVD formats, whose disks do not work in each other's machines but look essentially the same. Remember Betamax versus VHS? At least then you could tell one tape from the other.

Yup, if you choose poorly you may get a big, fat white elephant on your hands and you will be forced to buy the other format player just to watch the newer DVDs. But this is the worst part:

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, most of the 20 million high-definition TVs sold over the past three years aren't capable of displaying the disks in their full resolution. Worse, at least one major studio intends to downgrade the picture even more unless consumers hook their players up through a special, pricey cable aimed at preventing piracy.

That is right you just bought a lemon HD-TV if you bought one in the past few years since it won't show the full resolution with these new DVD players. I have a feeling that these new DVDs will cost more money since they include the high-def option. So you will be essentially paying more for something that you won't be able to see. Plus, you may even see that picture all blurry because you don't have that anti-piracy cable.

New software included on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases, however, will automatically slash the picture quality in half, unless consumers have a relatively new connector and cable called HDMI to hook up players to their televisions. Only one in 20 HD sets sold to early adopters over the past few years has the right version of the connector. Only 15% of new sets sold this year will include it, and deliver the full 1080 resolution capable of showing such detail. "What do you have then? A very expensive DVD player," says Sony Senior Vice-President Tim Baxter.

This is all going to be a big logjam at Christmas when people realize this is going down. I have a feeling that they will get confused and end up not buying anything while waiting for the dust to settle. Could be a good idea to check out shorting Best Buy, Circuit City etc. They may have a bleak Christmas depending on what the public does with this news.

I certainly won't be buying a new DVD player until I know which one is going to be the Betamax and the price of this cable comes down. What will really suck is when Netflix sends you the wrong DVD and you can't play it at all and have to send it back.

I guess there will be a Blue-Ray or HD-DVD button on the site that you will have to hit before you ask for the DVD. I have no idea. I would bet that carrying a number of copies of two different formats will cut into their bottom line. Netflix could be another short candidate.