Financial Times has an article up about the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war, and seems to be of the opinion that this war is a bad thing for consumers. I disagree - we have two potential paths here, and while Blu-Ray has some technical advantages, the HD-DVD format is going to be vastly cheaper in the near term. What consumers will get is an actual choice as to what they value more. Better than the industry deciding by fiat, IMHO.

My suspicion is that cost will win out in the short term, and that will end up driving the long term. Here's the relevant detail from the story:

And so, the war is on. Toshiba, which has recruited Microsoft and Intel to its camp, is in the middle of a 40-city US tour to promote its HD-DVD format and hopes to steal a march on the competition by shipping the first $499 players to retailers later this month.

Sony, meanwhile along with Philips and Pioneer persuaded Dell, the world’s biggest personal computer maker, and most of the Hollywood studios, to back the rival Blu-ray format it began developing more than a decade ago. Its players are expected to go on sale a few months after HD-DVD and will cost twice as much. Yet the Sony coalition believes its technology is superior. It is also hoping to secure a boost from the November launch of the PlayStation 3 video game console, which has been fitted to play Blu-ray discs and is expected to fly off the shelves.

Unless Sony and its partners can find a way to drop that price, I suspect that the 2X factor will be a killer. The fact that the Blu-Ray will ship in the PS3 won't matter so much IMHO - I seriously doubt that the PS3 will displace the stock DVD player from the stereo component stack. Next Christmas, when the real sales battle starts to pick up, prospective buyers will see one thing: the respective price tags. Technical superiority simply won't trump a 2X difference. If you disagree, step into the Wayback machine and ponder the mid-80's sales figures for plain old DOS IBM clones versus the Macintosh.

Now, I could be wrong - one of the critical backers Sony has (so far) is the movie industry. If the market has tons of Blu-Ray disks, and only a relative handful of HD-DVD disks, things might go the other way - even with the price differential. It will be interesting to watch this play out.