http://live.pirillo.com/ – Bwana in the chatroom asks which format is going to win: HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, or Downloading?

The chatroom widely agrees that downloading content is the way of the future, but there’s no doubt that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will be fighting it out int he format war for some time to come.

According to Wikipedia, HD-DVD is an advanced format:

The HD DVD disc is designed to be the successor to the standard DVD format. It can store about three times as much data as its predecessor (15 GB per layer instead of 4.7 GB).

The HD DVD standard was jointly developed by Toshiba and NEC. On 19 November 2003, the DVD Forum voted to support HD DVD as the high definition successor of the standard DVD. At this meeting, they also renamed it HD DVD.

HD DVD stands for “High Definition Digital Versatile Disc.” The format had previously been called the “Advanced Optical Disc” (AOD).

Blu-Ray has a different history:

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue-violet laser used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red, 650 nm laser. A single layer Blu-ray Disc can store 25 GB, over 5 times the size of a single layer DVD at 4.7 GB. A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost 6 times the size of a dual layer DVD at 8.5 GB.

Blu-ray Disc is similar to PDD, another optical disc format developed by Sony (which has been available since 2004) but offering higher data transfer speeds. PDD was not intended for home video use and was aimed at business data archiving and backup.