You'll probably agree that anything which already exists inthe world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part ofthe way things are. And anything that happens to be invented between when you'refifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you canprobably get a career in it. But anything invented after you're thirty-five isjust plain wrong and against the natural order of things!

That was definitely the case a few years ago, at least, itcertainly was when Douglas Adams was still around to discuss the matter. Butthings are changing now, and people of all ages are embracing the digital age ata rate of knots (clicks?).

High Definition: buzzword of the 21st Century

HD - it's a buzzwordthat's been around for a good few years, but it's only now beginningto infiltrate the homes of real people. That's 'real people' as opposed togeeky technology journalists like me, obsessive Sony fanboy-types and also,well, weird people.

So what does it all mean? What's the difference betweenBlu-ray and HD DVD? What's the difference between DVDs and HD DVDs and Blu-raydiscs? What's the difference between HDTVs and HD TV? What does 1080p mean? Whatexactly does 'HD Ready' mean? What's the difference between LCD TVs and PlasmaTVs? What is the meaning of life?

While you may or may not be aware that the meaning of lifeis actually '42', it is in fact likely that there is at least one questionabove that you don't know the answer to. And that's what this blog willhopefully resolve. Here's a quick HD fact file for you to point your eyeballsat:

Blu-ray, HD DVD andDVDs:

Whilst occupying the same amount of physical space as anormal DVD or CD, HD discs contain a lot more data. That's because the dataclusters on the disc are so much more compact. To read these smaller clusters,you need a player which uses a laser with a very short wavelength; the redlasers in DVD players are not suitable for this. So the HD DVD and Blu-ray playersuse blue-violet lasers, which have extremely short wavelengths and are thusable to pick out the very small and precise data from the HD discs.

The resulting extra capacity is used to store movies at muchhigher resolutions, and that's called high definition.

Blu-ray v HD DVD

As far as us 'normal people' are concerned, there are nottoo many noticeable differences between the two HD disc formats. Essentiallythey represent two different ways to store lots of information on a spinningshiny disc that's the same size as a CD.

The HD DVD format is basically an updated version of olderDVD technology. This means that the players and the discs are really cheap tomanufacture - and thus cheap to buy. The Blu-ray format on the other hand is completely new. It has alarger dual-layer capacity, but it's also more costly to produce.

This results in HD DVD players being half the price of Blu-ray ones; no realsurprise then that standalone HD DVD players are outselling Blu-ray ones byalmost three to one!

But in terms of performance, there's not really much betweenthe two. I was in a comedy club once, and a bloke asked: if you had to make achoice, which would you rather: instead of an eyeball - having a hard boiled egg.OR, instead of feet - hooves...?

It really doesn't matter, both options are fairlyunattractive at the moment!

Oh, and if you were thinking of asking me who is going towin the format war: I refuse to answer that one on the grounds that I don't knowthe answer.