The 2007 Christmas shopping season is upon us. HD Ready flat TVs are destined to be big sellers yet again, but what about the high-def kit to go with them?

Once more the next-generation disc formats are fighting for supremacy, much to the relative indifference of consumers.

The rise of DVD

The electronics and film industries got it right 10 years ago when DVD was created. It was a single, unified format that was a notable step-up from VHS. It was also smaller and cheaper than the little-used LaserDisc.

Back then, you had to change format to get clear benefits from new technology. Nowadays, digital upscaling is able to pull quite a decent performance from otherwise ageing media - it has inadvertently turned out to be a thorn in the side of HD discs.

Some analysts believe that people will come around to the new HD disc formats, probably due to the 'Trojan Horse' tactics employed by the likes of Sony.

Sony has based its PlayStation 3 games console around a Blu-ray disc drive, despite that device trailing its rivals from Microsoft and Nintendo. However, any successes now may be short-lived.

HD DVD vs. Blu-ray

It's no surprise that a movie such as 300 has done comparatively well on Blu-ray, even though it's also available on HD DVD. This is thanks to Warner Bros' support for both hi-def disc types.

The movie's overblown treatment of a sword-and-sandals historical epic boasts so much computer generated imagery that it resembles the deleted scenes that appear between levels on a video game rather than an actual film.

You could say similar things about Blu-ray's other 'big guns', the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Pirates of the Caribbean movies, while HD DVD seemingly favours more grown up fare such as the Bourne... trilogy and the multi-layered TV reinvention of Battlestar Galactica (although the HD DVD release of Michael Bay's brainless Transformers disproves that theory, until you recall that he originally wanted it on Blu-ray).

Slipped discs

HD DVD is winning (as far as it goes) on the price of its hardware, with £200 entry-level models undercutting the cheapest Blu-ray spinners, including the £300 PS3, by about a third. Even the top-of-the-line HD DVD player - the Toshiba HD-EP35 - costs only £279.

Price erosion and more dual-format models from the likes of Samsung and LG will inevitably boost interest for both hi-def disc systems a little, but the fate of music discs continues to show what will probably happen to all packaged media once broadband speeds become consistently faster.

Many people have already got used to downloading both music and standard-definition video of new and classic TV shows or the occasional movie.

The technology is roughly the same whether you follow the legal or bootleg route, though October's raid and closure of the TV Links website made pretty big headlines, more than many bona fide TV on-demand launches are likely to get.

This shows how popular a user-friendly, centrally indexed site that offers nearly everything, can be. If only a genuinely legit site could provide the same. Indeed, there are arguments that TV Links wasn't actually breaking any laws, as written, because it was an indexing service that, unlike pirate disc sellers, didn't sell anything.

Bootleg HD DVD

Scroll forward 10 years or so and you'll probably find bootleg HD DVD sellers stalking your local supermarket car park, while genuine HD discs are in the bargain bins in garage shops, and the current high street music and video retail or rental stores have vanished like their predecessors MVC, Our Price and Fopp.

The mass market is likely to be an ultra-high-speed broadband service supplying a wide range of hi-def content on demand - some free to watch, some pay per view, others tied into subscription bundles.

Unlike the current situation where numerous rival online services each offer a relatively limited selection (and if you want to use lots of them, you'll have multiple account log-ins and variations of software to juggle), it's conceivable that you'll see something more like today's digital TV line-up, with a manageable number of major providers and some overlap between all of them.

This article first appeared in magazine (issue 328) and was written by Ian Calcutt.