I'd been sitting on the sidelines of the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray spectacle, reluctant to sink cash into either hardware or media until the dust settled and one victor remained.

I'm hardly alone in this sentiment: No one wants an expensive piece of hardware sitting unused, or a media collection that is only playable on the one TV down in the basement (after reconnecting the derelict player that had been disconnected to free an HDMI port).

Sales had been relatively slow for standalone players.

Instead the most successful uptake of the new formats has been via the Sony PS3 and its built-in Blu-ray player (Sony is the principal backer and beneficiary of Blu-ray), accounting for a hefty percentage of deployed Blu-ray players worldwide, whether their owners know that they're being counted as faithful Blu-ray fans or not. For those who were aware of the feature, I'm sure it helped them justify the purchase to their parents/wives/husbands: "But it's also a next generation DVD player!" (Countless PS2s were sold on the justification that it could double as a somewhat mediocre DVD player).

This vaulted Blu-ray into an early lead considering that Microsoft, despite being an HD-DVD backer, didn't incorporate HD-DVD into the XBox 360 -- there remains widespread confusion about this -- instead offering it later as an add on player.

The boards filled with the Blu-ray faithful, hopeful that they could help the format succeed to vindicate their purchase justification.

Not wanting a PS3, the motivation to upgrade just wasn't as strong as it was for, say, the desire to move from VHS to DVD. While the new formats technically offer improved resolution, and a much better video compression technology (greatly reducing irritants like posterization in dark sections), the improvement isn't dramatic compared to standard DVD run through a competent upscaling DVD player. Audio has theoretically improved on the new formats, but given the sparse availability of DTS-encoding movies on DVD media -- DTS being the higher quality alternative to Dolby Digital -- the audio capabilities of DVD was barely exploited at all already, so I don't expect much real improvement with the new formats, beyond looking better on paper.

The interactivity features of the platform have improved (even seemingly trivial things like accessing the chapter guide while the movie continues to play, the chapter guide translucently overlaid), but until the media makers start fully leveraging it, and unless you are the sort to draw a lot of value from the extras, that isn't a major selling point. DVD was a huge convenience win over VHS, with random access and no be-kind-rewind demands, but the new formats are just minor improvements over what we already have.

Which brings me to my recent desire to buy an upscaling DVD player, desiring a unit that interpolated more elegantly to HDTV resolutions.

Then I came across a Toshiba HD-DVD HD-A3 player for less than $200 (with 2 free HD-DVDs in the box, and another 5 via a mail in form).

So I picked sides, and chose HD-DVD. I've thus declared fealty to the format, and will now order the loyal minion t-shirt and ballcap, and debate the point passionately whenever the opportunity arises!

My purchase justification goes as follows-

• It's cheap. Really cheap. Comes with a couple of movies as well, which is nice. It doesn't have every feature, but it's a good start. [For instance it's missing 1080p, but that didn't disuade me: 1080p happens to be one of the most oversold, misrepresented features trumpeted today. I'd much rather have 1080/24]
  
• We'll still be largely watching traditional DVDs, with the odd HD-DVD rented from zip.ca. I'm not going to cry any tears that some companies have been bribed or coerced into only supporting one format or the other -- I'll just go with the standard DVD option.
  
• It's a really, really good upscaling DVD player, so I'm completely satisified with the purchase even without playing next-generation media. If Blu-ray was victorious and tossed the HD-DVD consortium into the dustbin of history, I wouldn't have purchase regret (I would feel quite differently if bought one of the $700 players).
  
• The storage differential between the two formats is irrelevant for the prescribed use. While the greater capacity of Blu-ray is a win if you want it as a backup format for a PC, it isn't pertinent for a 4 hour VC1-encoded motion picture with top quality audio and sound. Indicative of this is the fact that quite a few Blu-ray releases have been encoded with the vastly inferior MPEG2 codec, wasting the extra space to use an obsolete compression technology.
  
• In a few years, this will all be moot anyways, as streaming technology and capacity improves. Ultimately these are holdover technologies.

I still don't plan on amassing a media collection, but I have been enjoying the higher quality rentals -- when a given release is available on HD-DVD -- for just a small premium over a decent upscaling DVD player.