Others, however, suggested that Blockbuster's announcement is much ado about nothing, given the diminishing role of video rental in general. They argue that a far more significant factor is the cost of the players for each format.

Reuters reported last week that, although the players for the HD DVD format are still less expensive than those for Blu-ray, Toshiba has cut its projected sales figures of HD DVD players in the U.S. this year by more than 40 percent. The company had predicted that it would sell 1.8 million units and has lowered its estimate to just one million.

The Real Battle

But lurking in the shadows is another, less publicized battleground: The use of next-gen DVDs as enterprise storage devices. Businesses have a continuing need for massive amounts of reliable archival storage, and both Blu-ray and HD DVD have been angling for a piece of this lucrative market.

Although Blu-ray discs offer greater capacity, the HD DVD format has been perceived as having an edge in the corporate space, in light of the fact that its components and discs are generally less expensive. But while high-definition DVDs offer the prospect of capacities up to 30 GB, the cost of hard drive storage is dropping, with 300 GB drives (and larger) retailing at major outlets like Best Buy for as little as $99. Those types of numbers raise questions about the long-term competitiveness of optical storage.

From the perspective of enterprise storage, the chief impediment to widespread adoption of either format is the lack of PCs and notebooks equipped with drives for reading and writing the high-definition DVDs. While there have been some announcements of high-definition DVD drives for PCs, they have been small in number and relatively expensive. In this market too, adoption has been slowed by the ready availability of large-capacity, cheap, reliable hard drives.

Learning from the Past

The overarching question, which has received relatively little attention, is whether this will effectively be the last storage format war, given the growing reliance on less format-dependent storage and distribution over networks. It's worth noting that one of the more reliable technological barometers, the adult industry, is largely staying out of this struggle altogether, opting instead for increasing reliance on digital distribution of content.

The paradigm most often used for the Blu-ray/HD DVD battle -- the Beta/VHS tussle of 20 years ago -- offers one other objective lesson that has largely been ignored. Yes, VHS decisively won the format war ... but how many VHS cassettes does Blockbuster rent these days? Given the rate at which broadband is spreading across the United States and the rest of the globe, it's likely that the shelf life of high-capacity DVDs will be limited.