People often ask which is the better format HD DVD or Blu-ray? Of course what they should be asking is which format is better for us, because obviously content publishers can and do have differing opinions.

HD DVD has a number of key points why I want it to succeed over Blu-ray:

1) Region free.
2) Less draconian copy protection.
3) Finalised specification.
4) Cost.

There's also the whole sensible and descriptive name, better picture quality and questionable reliability with Blu-ray, and the fact Blu-ray was a format created to divide the industry, but those are all secondary to the above in my opinion.

If Blu-ray wins, what happens?

1) Bob Public buys a film on holiday, brings it home and find it doesn't work.

2) Joe Public buys a film, expects to be able to legally copy it to his hard disk based portable player, only to find it doesn't work being informed he needs to buy the film again in an online store to download it to his player.

3) John Public buys a first, second, heck even third generation Blu-ray player, only to find it won't play any new Blu-ray films any more because the specifications have changed.

4) Bill Public ends up paying hundreds or thousands of pounds more than he or she would otherwise. Re-tooling all those factories and spending twice as much time developing a menu for the film costs us money.

In short, we get screwed, being stuck with an inferior format.

Some film companies of course love this. Disney love the copy protection, Fox loves the region locking and Sony love releasing products whose specifications aren't finalised, so you can buy a new product to do the exact same job a few years down the line. They work in their best interests (or at least what they think are their best interests), which obviously are not the same as ours which is not to be unexpected, that's capitalism for you.

However not everybody looks at the format war rationally and thinks, which format would better serve us?

Some go on their brand loyalties, the Blu-boys are largely made up of PlayStation fanboys, and people who hate Microsoft (ignoring the point that Microsoft technology is in both formats), and then yes there are people who for some strange reason are actually a fanboy of an optical disc format, of how a 12cm piece of plastic is put together.

By fanboy I mean a person who scourers the internet looking for anybody of a descenting opinion and showers them in abuse, or posts comments on however their little pet technology is awesome and everything else is "teh sux".

There's something these people need to remember, they're partly responsible for why Bob Public wasted his hard earned money only to find his film won't play on his player, or why Joe Public can't rip the film to his portable player, why John Public's Blu-ray player doesn't work with new discs and of course why all of them and Bill Public ends up paying far more money to either work around these problems, or pay for the additional costs of Blu-ray.

Thanks Blu-ray fans, do you enjoy helping the film industry screw the public over or don't you even realise you're doing it?