And the winner is…
Blu-Ray. Son of a bitch. Sony’s betamax V2 has won, with Toshiba announcing it is dropping HD DVD. The less DRMified and more standard HD disk format.
Possibly because they paid off Toshiba with a fab plant (for making microchips).
So if someone offers you a cheap HD DVD player, there is a reason. It’s obsolete, defunct, only good for playing the few dozen titles released, and upscaling your DVDs.
The future is downloads anyway.