DVD Wars

Forecasting a 1992 general election victory for Neil Kinnock wasn’t a highlight. Neither was the attempt to persuade an uncle to buy a BSB “squarial” instead of a Sky dish in 1990. But the nadir of my futurology career came in 1989 when, having spent an entire school lunch hour listening to my Walkman, I placed the headphones over the ears of my best mate and remarked: “She’ll be the biggest singer in the world one day. Mark my words.”

The singer was Debbie Gibson.

So when Warner Bros, the film studio, announced this week that it had plumped for Sony’s Blu-ray in preference to Toshiba’s HD DVD in the battle to become the standard format in the next-generation video disc market, I saw an opportunity for redemption. I would, I decided, try out both formats and predict how things would pan out.

However, after half an hour of alternately watching The Mummy Returns on a £249 HD DVD player and Behind Enemy Lines on a £399 Blu-ray machine in the Peter Jones department store, a problem transpired…

Read atTimes Online