I can here all the blu-ray owners celebrating bigger than the new year on this one...

Only the hard-line fanboys will be jumping around like girls. Personally, I want one format (HD or Blu-Ray) where I can watch my films. I'm not really bothered what format won because as long as I can see a nice clear picture with great sound ,to me, a films a film.
It sound like your holding back from saying 'PS3 owners' because thats where a most of the Blu-Ray owners come from (at least thats what I've read). Don't worry, the Xbox fanboyism has been just as bad over the last year with PS3's game delays, poor frame rate issues on rushed releases, extra content with GTA IV Special Edition. Theres been one or two snippets of good news for Sony over the last three/four months with sales growth in certain quarters and several exclusive games which are getting punters excited (MGS4, GT5, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, Home) and the '360 fanboys' are quick to jump on with their opinion. Lets not start ANOTHER mud slinging match. It's an industry website which includes retail where I work.

Oh, and I own a 360 btw...

this is not what i was hoping for. Secretly i always wanted HD-DVD to win. So does this mean the HD-DVD player for 360 is now useless?

Lets be honest HD-DVD didnt have a chance from the start, I personally think it was obvious that blu ray would win in the end as to be honest the PS2 near enough boosted the DVD launch and PS3 with it's loyal fanbase and the only games console to come with a HD format built into it meant that all the film studios sooner or later realised that they had a large audience to focus on that already had the blu-ray format and was near enough an instant customer base. Some Film studios / retailers have now only just finally realised and toshiba has now given them the final push they all needed.
I personally dont own either format at the moment but I could see how this would end up knowing that the PS3 would boost the blu ray customer base considerablly as at the end of the day thousands if not millions of customers own a blu ray drive whether they want it or not - HD would have stood a chance if the Xbox 360 had built the HD drive into the console as soon as possible from the start but that never happened and here we are today, so when will Microsoft be bringing out a Blu ray drive add on ?

Its ironic that someone said and its true that such add-ons have always failed in the gaming industry even if this was just for watching movies.

*Sigh* Oh well its not useless as I can still buy tons of hd-dvd's and import them cheap as they are all region free.

What I also like about hd-dvd is the in-movie options with most or nearly all blu-ray movies its too simple and not much extra content however I have to admit when I watched a blu-ray movie around my friends house on his PS3 it did sound more beefier and we both have the same surround system.

... now it is official ;)

My poor old HD-DVD drive.

@4

Personally, at the beginning of this all I thought HD-DVD would win. Look at Sony's track record with proprietary formats - terrible. But they've actually done it this time. Glad I didn't fork out on the 360 HD-DVD drive now.

At least now I'll have some reason for owning my PS3 as up to now the games out are either pretty poor or better on the 360. Up to now its been a rather large dust magnet, a poor Linux box and something to play Flow on.

It shows it doesnt matter whats the best, it's about who can get the largest customer base whether those customers really want it or not. Sony hands down win on their marketing strategy for putting it in all their ps3's it was a gamble as Microsoft could have done it with all their 360's a while ago but they never did, but sony didnt know if they would or not and took the chance.

Blu Ray wins! The war is over, hurrah.

Right then, now that that's all over and done with can we just get a move on with online movie distribution?

… and please, please can we have no more of these ridiculously slow and inflexible optical disc formats. The 80s have been and gone, firing lasers at plastic discs should have been a thing of the past by now.

I'd rather fire a laser at a plastic disk than spend more than a few hours downloading gigbytes worth of HD movie on my BT Broadband. I'm paying for BT's best broadband available and yet I still receive nowhere near the speeds advertised (pretty much like every other broadband ISP).

Digital distribution for games yes, but not for movies..... at least until Virgin Media are the first to offer 50 MB broadband (yes, i've done research).

Why for games but not movies? Games can be as big as, if not bigger than a movie, unless you mean digitally distributing HD movies.

I'm shocked Sony has managed to win a format war, though it was the technical superior of HD-DVD. Toshiba argued their case solely on the fact that distributors would want a cheaper way of manufacturing HD movie discs (as the disc was related to DVD, manufacturing plants could be converted to HD-DVD, cutting cost and startup times). Oddly enough, Sony either got enough players out there or convinced studios that they need higher capacity to win.

Finally, where's Ryu - he was our resident staunch HD-DVD supporter, wasn't he?

PS. Trying not to be irritable here, but it's been a long day: could you use more commas and paragraphs when posting? I'm interested in what you have to say, but if it's hard to read I get angry! :-)

@ Rikki - Yes, as I said "gigabytes worth of HD movie".

where are you fanboy!

@15

I think he's posting under the name Chuck Norris now. And the name change seems to have bought about a slight improvement in plebbishness, fortunately. Though he's still a pleb.

As Toshiba sits there licking its wounds, I can't help but feel glad that the latest format war is over despite the fact that I have chosen the losing side. It seems to be that the world's major corporations haven't learned anything from past mistakes. Instead of getting together and developing a single next-gen technology (and thus collectively claim our money under one banner which would make more sense), they still fought it out to the bitter end for pointless domination. In a strange way they remind me of tribal warlords: The world observes their trivial, small-minded pointless fighting, a conflict only makes sense to them, and still nobody is able to kick some common sense into them! This applies to today's corporate mentality as a whole: Too many overpaid high-end directors with inflated egos and the usual 'winner at all costs' mentality, who just sit there in the comfort of their offices completely detached from reality, completely disconnected from the needs and wants of the end users, their customers. ..

;) How much money wasted!

u wanna download movies quickly boyz - check out apple tv - it's the way forward

Being on the losing side is not always as bad as it seems. Sure enough with PS3 having a blue-ray integrated it would ensure its ultimate success yet having few pennies to buy movies and even fewer to buy another games console means finding a shortcut. True I did linger on purchasing an external HD drive for my 360 it now doesn't seem like such a bad investment, at least until cheaper blue-ray players become availiable. £40 for an external HD-DVD player and i even got two HD movies thrown in isn't too bad of a deal. There are plenty of brilliant films in HD-DVD format availiable and now at a fraction of the price, seems a lot more cost effective than forking out for a blue-ray player that currently offers little in the way of difference.

P.S I owned a minidisc