Well at long last this pathetic formats war is over.  Toshiba today finally threw in the towel after weeks of endless posturing and innuendo not unlike that found in the epic battle above from The Quest for the Holy Grail.

It is really a shame because now I can't make fun of Sony for never having successfully pushed a decent mainstream format.  How Blu-ray won this whole war is crazy considering the fact that HD-DVD as a software specification was far superior for development as well as consumer rights.  This is a big win for big entertainment and distributors and a huge loss for the little guy.

The issue that resonated the strongest with me was around the concept of the "Mandatory Managed Copy," which forced studios to allow for content portability which was technically illegal with DVDs.  Although Blu-ray has the ability to do managed copies, it isn't "mandatory," and efforts to add language to the spec to that end was rebuffed by the studios.  I won't get into the Java issue, as I'm negatively biased against it.

Oh well, I don't really care either way 'cause I'm not buying a player until China-based company, Cyberhome, releases a cheap $29.99 version at Best Buy :)  The days of spending more than $50 bucks a dummy reader device are over, people need to get a clue.