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I was continually dazed and confused at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, thanks to the joint effects of jetlag, a hideous cold, full pancake stack breakfasts and the endless noise of my hotel's slot machines.

But I was still able to spot irony when I saw it. And I saw it in spades on the stands of those arch Blu-ray supporters, Sony and Panasonic.

When Warner Bros dumped HD DVD

Not surprisingly both brands were in bullish form following the pre-show announcement - make that bombshell - that Warner Bros was going to go exclusively with Blu-ray from May of this year.

While a touch unseemly, though, such ebullience is entirely forgivable given the potential magnitude of the Warner Bros decision. But what was rather harder to swallow for a non-partisan home cinema fan like myself was the complete lack of irony with which the two brands were pushing the supposed benefits of the Blu-ray format.

Basically the Panasonic and Sony stands had big sections on them bragging in the loudest tones about two 'awesome new Blu-ray disc features'. The first is being able to watch two pictures at once - say for a filmed director's commentary track. The second, being able to access online supplemental materials.

This is all well and good, of course, except for one small detail: while these features are indeed new to Blu-ray, they've actually been available via the rival HD DVD format from day one of that format's launch. And that's the best part of two years ago!

Blu-ray still isn't finished...

To me, seeing the format that now looks likely to win the HD disc war bragging about only just being able to offer features that its struggling rival has always offered, was ironic in the extreme. Yet to the smiley, starry eyed people running the stands, these new features were just another great reason why Blu-ray is supposedly the best.

In fact, when I asked the 'booth people' what made Blu-ray's shiny new picture in picture and online features any different to those long offered by HD DVD, all I got was a slightly bemused look and a response along the lines of:

"Well, I didn't actually know HD DVD could do these things too, but I'm sure Blu-ray does them better'. Followed by a shrug that seemed to say: 'but who cares about HD DVD now anyway?'

As a person who's had the good fortune to see both the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the same films in recent months, I can say categorically that, in the vast majority of cases, the HD DVD versions have been better thanks to their online features and use of picture in picture tools.

I stress again that these are not the warped findings of some deluded fanboy; I honestly am not bothered which HD format wins. In fact, I even suspect that in some technical ways Blu-ray is actually a marginally superior format to HD DVD. But it's a plain, undeniable fact that until now Blu-ray just hasn't been a finished format, and so hasn't even been playing on a level field.

The best reason to buy a PS3

In fact, the ultimate irony is that Blu-ray isn't even finished now. For while picture in picture Blu-ray discs have started to dribble off the production lines, all of the 'Blu-ray Live' online stuff Sony and Panasonic were making such a song and dance about at CES is, in fact, still not here in a fully working fashion.

It's not even part of the latest mandatory Blu-ray Profile 1.1 specification, for heaven's sake. So all those Blu-ray players you're now expected to immediately snap up will themselves arguably be outdated again when BD-Live (Profile 2.0) players finally hit shelves.

Obviously it's not unheard of by any means for the latecomer to a technology format war to end up winning. But if Blu-ray has now pretty much seen HD DVD off, it's pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of winning without actually ever having caught up!