Upside: PlayStation 3 plays Blu-ray movies; Blu-ray has support of 70 percent of movie studios; Current Blu-ray discs can hold more data or video than HD DVD counterparts.

Downside: Blu-ray players are more expensive than their HD DVD counterparts; support for audio can vary from player to player; different profiles can cause confusion over special feature support.

Outlook: By continuing sell almost twice as many discs as HD DVD and now enjoying the exclusive support of 70 percent of movie studios, Blu-ray is the odds-on favorite to win the format war.

Big Blu's advantage
The format war was essentially tied until Warner Studios decided to become Blu-ray exclusive in early 2008. Now Blu-ray has the support for 70 percent of movie studios, including Sony Pictures (including MGM/Columbia TriStar), Disney (including Touchstone and Miramax), Fox, Warner, and Lions Gate.

Blu-ray also has an advantage in raw capacity (50GB vs. HD DVD's 30GB), and while that hasn't made much of a difference in the vast majority of titles, the special features of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were in HD on Blu-ray, but only in standard-def on HD DVD. We can only expect more of this as high-def special features, which demand much more capacity on the disc, become more prevalent.

Of course, there's still a small chance things could change. HD DVD could conceivably entice a studio back to its side or cut hardware prices even further and turn the tide. But as it stands now, Blu-ray has a commanding lead in the format war.

The hardware
While HD DVD's hardware is almost entirely made by Toshiba, Blu-ray has many more manufacturers producing players. Since the initial launch, Samsung, Sony, Pioneer, and Panasonic have released second-generation and third-generation Blu-ray disc players, usually with features similar to those of first-gen players and slightly better prices. Unlike the entry-level Toshiba models, which output at 1080i maximum, all Blu-ray players released so far are capable of outputting in 1080p. Blu-ray players are not required to have Dolby TrueHD audio decoding (unlike HD DVD), so you'll have to carefully peruse the spec sheet if that's important to you.

Another area of Blu-ray hardware confusion has been the difference between the various Blu-ray profiles. Original Blu-ray Profile 1.0 players won't be able to handle special picture-in-picture commentary tracks on some new Blu-ray discs, whereas new Profile 1.1 players can handle picture-in-picture, but can't handle the future internet-enabled functionality of Profile 2.0. Luckily, all Blu-ray players released in 2008 are required to be Blu-ray Profile 1.1 compliant, but retailers are still selling older Profile 1.0 players. For a more comprehensive discussion of these issues, read our helpful Blu-ray Profile explainer.

The downside of Blu-ray winning the format war
As much as we're thrilled by the prospect of a single, unified high-def movie disc format, there are some significant downsides to a Blu-ray win. The most important is that the cost of buying a high-def disc player is likely to remain high for the rest of 2008. Sure, the PlayStation 3 is available for $400, but HD DVD players were selling for $99 at the end of 2007. And while we've seen some indications that Blu-ray could be getting cheaper, there won't be as much of an incentive to slash prices if HD DVD is no longer major player.

The other major downside is inevitable confusion over Blu-ray profiles. With HD DVD, all of the features of the discs worked on every player--even the initial HD-A1. With Blu-ray, there are many Profile 1.0 players that can't play picture-in-picture commentary, and there will be many Profile 1.1 players that can't play future internet-enabled content.

The movies
There are no combo Blu-ray/DVD twin-format discs at the moment. Online prices for Blu-ray discs are in the $20-to-$28 range--exactly the same as HD DVD. The total number of titles from the respective camps is around the same: about 330 for HD DVD and 360 for Blu-ray by the end of 2007. Video quality of both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs varies with the film itself, but titles available on both formats generally have identical video quality.

The gaming wild card
Sony's $500 PlayStation 3 video game system can play Blu-ray discs and standard DVDs as well as any current standalone player, and it's currently the most popular Blu-ray playback device on the market. It doesn't have all the home-theater options--analog audio output, for instance--that some standalone Blu-ray players have, but those units can't play games.