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Like the famous video tape wars between VHS and BetaMax of the late 1970's, Sony has won the war of the next generation formats in high definition DVDs. Best Buy, Net Flix, Blockbuster, Warner Bros. and Wal-Mart have decided on the Blu-Ray format which corners Toshiba's HD DVD with few major backers.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Feburary 17, 2008 "Toshiba Corp. is highly likely to pull out of the HD DVD business early this week, people familiar with the situation said, marking the end of an intense battle over next-generation formats against Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray technology."

The Blu-Ray format holds 27 gigabytes vs 4.7 for the standard DVD format. The format is called a Blu-ray Disc because a blue laser is able to force more data onto discs than when red rays are used.

Blu-Ray was developed by Sony, Matsushita, Philips, Samsung, LG, Thomson, Hitachi, Pioneer and Sharp.

This CNN News Video on the war done in late 2007.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVqphCqkSZo]