And the winner is......

Due to the hangover that I have from last night's primary coverage, I am willing to make my prediction....

Congratulations to Sony and their Blu-ray format. My understanding is that the battle went down to the wire with Warner but your 500 million prevailed. A few things that will be interesting to see how they play out:

1. What will Toshiba do? They are now manufacturing players for a format that has essentially lost. Perhaps they hold on and hope that HD-DVD keeps a foothold in do-it-yourself markets due to it's lower cost?

2. How long before Microsoft releases a Xbox Blu-ray accessory? Perhaps their adoption of HD-DVD was merely a competitive ploy against Sony? I tend to think they are banking on their Live download service, and at $6.00 per HD movie rental why wouldn't they be?

3. Will we continue to see Blu-ray player costs dramatically drop if the competition is down and out?

My geekness almost won out over socially acceptable behavior at the local Wal-mart a couple of days ago. I had to utterly restrain myself from informing the dude in the cowboy boots and trucker hat that he wouldn't be able to buy movies for much longer for that HD-DVD player he was lugging around. In the end I decided that there was probably a better chance the guy thought he was buying a souped up VHS-DVD combo, than he was a HD video enthusiast.