Not surprisingly, Sony and Toshiba have left the bargaining table and are going to go ahead and compete for the next generation of DVD. This means consumers will have to be aware of what they buy and the compatibility associated with it.

I have yet to see a format war where either one company stops producing their device (even if it is beter [betamax]), or where devices are made that can read both formats, effectively sidestepping the issue all together.

Sony and Toshiba have failed to agree on a unified format for next-generation DVDs.

Talks have been suspended indefinitely between a group of companies led by Sony (SNE), which supports the Blu-ray format, and the Toshiba-led bloc, which backs the HD-DVD format. Sony’s Blu-ray disks have a more sophisticated format and play back 25 GB of data compared with HD-DVD’s 15, but are more expensive to produce.

My current preferance is Blu-ray eventhough it is backed by a company that is usually very proprietary in its media formats as the amount of storage is much more important to me than the current cost of media production (which always drops as a format is accepted).