For decades now the entertainment world has been entwined in technology wars that have led to two frontrunners battling it out, with the winner taking it all. VHS and Betamax was a battle royal with the lesser quality format, VHS, winning the day and reaping the enormous reward. I could mention many others.

DVD, the most successful entertainment media ever, still has a great-perceived value with the consumer. There was a day when music CDs had a positive perceived value, but those days disappeared with the music business and the explosion of bandwidth on the internet and iTunes twisting the dagger. Street teams used to stand outside the House of Blues giving out free CDs to promote bands, but they invariably ended up on the floor paces away from their reception or in the nearest trash bin on the way to the parking lot. So far, the same cannot be said for DVD.

With the introduction of big screen TVs, High Definition programming was born to make the picture look much better on the massive viewing area. This content requires the processing of very large files. With the standard DVD being only able to hold 2 hours of Standard Definition Video (4.7GB), a larger capacity disc was needed with a laser that could read the information precisely. High Definition DVD is the logical next step. Discs need to be able to hold 2 hours of HD content or more, so the battle begins between two camps, Toshiba's HD DVD (15GB can hold 30GB Dual discs) and Sony's Blu Ray (25GB with the potential for more when the lasers can read layered discs).

This is an industry war that the general public could care less about, but these two camps are fighting it as if the losing party must be destroyed. A logical solution would be a dual player, but it would be way too expensive.

So let's take this from the perspective of the consumer, not the industry, for it is the consumer who is the ultimate arbiter. The consumer is familiar with quality DVD players for under $100, I have many that still work fine for $29. They buy a big screen 1080 TV (They have no idea what that means other than High Def potential). They buy DVDs for $5 - $30 on average and they look great on their screen. The Digital cable world then introduces them to High Definition viewing, and then all of a sudden the regular channel picture looks very average, (not close to un-watchable). Their DVD signal looks somewhere between Regular channel and High Def, very pleasant to the eye. They ask themselves, "why doesn't their standard def channels look as good as their Standard Def DVD picture?" The answer is; There is nearly no interference and distortion with the DVD signal. Consumers then buy a new $50 DVD player with HDMI and an Up-encoding feature that makes their DVD feed look even better. They ask themselves, "How much better can High Def DVD look and how much am I willing to spend to find out?"

Remember these consumers have been through format changes very recently from CD to online digital music. They chose lesser quality sound files, as long as they could find the titles they wanted, which were no longer easily found at Brick & Mortar music stores, when they wanted them, at a price that worked - 99c per song.

So the entertainment business has this chance to drive the most successful media ever to incredible new heights with HD, but here is where I think the battle will kill DVD.

Each camp appears to be putting out misinformation to degrade the other, I have heard from salespeople for both HD DVD and Blu Ray, at stores including Best Buy, that the other format won't play your old DVDs! Not true, both are backward compatible.

They are pushing that the quality is so much better on either format. Though it might be in technical terms, but to the average consumer, they won't be able to tell the difference without extreme inspection, at that point who cares anyway? And if they "bad mouth" Standard Def DVD too much, they will kill the perceived value of DVD and make consumers think of it as an inferior format? They are making industry partners choose one camp and dis the other; Blockbuster, Target and others chose Blu Ray. There is also a lack of titles and who is going to invest in a new format with very few titles available? Studios will be slow to make HD titles until they know which format to follow. So far, very few replicators are invested in HD. Apple are on the company board at Blu Ray yet their DVD Studio Pro software only works with HD DVD? Confusion?

There are many titles that really don't need High Def at all; they are just fine as standard def titles. Take two very successful brands, the "Shadow Dancers" visuals line from VJWorld, which would benefit little visually from being in HD, but a nature show like "Planet Earth," from the BBC, looks phenomenal in HD and does benefit. Landscapes and big spaces are where HD shows its best. There is a ton of programming that has no place on HD, not to denigrate, as the visual quality is great in Standard Def, but it would be just a waste of everyone's investment.

This coming 4th quarter, both HD DVD and Blu Ray will try to sell as many players as they can to establish their position in the marketplace. Will consumers be willing to invest around $300 on an entry level HD DVD player or $500 on an entry level Blu Ray Player? Will retailers tell consumers the truth about the war that could leave them within 12 months with an obsolete player that has very few titles in HD available for them? A player that they end up using as a very expensive Standard Def DVD Player? I don't think so.

Like with the end of the Music Business, pushing HD DVD Audio and 5.1, while the battle over future formats ensues a third shadowy contender will enter the fray and win the prize. Ultimately DVD will die in the process taking out HD discs as well. The entertainment business better not sit back and arrogantly think it controls the situation because this shadowy contender has won virtually every other digital war without ever being invited to fight, The Internet and Digital Downloads On Demand.

If the entertainment business as a whole, Manufacturers, retailers, distributors, etc, can't find out how to give consumers what they want on DVD, easily available and accessible at a price that works, mark my words, consumers will chose a lesser product on the internet, and DVD will begin its march to a cold death. If you want proof, look at how people will spend time watching horribly pixilated videos on Youtube. And when all is said and done, who suffers? We all do, The entire entertainment industry!