The high-def DVD wars are over! That really didn't take that long... certainly not like the years and millions of consumer dollars poured into the Betamax vs. VHS battle back in the 80s.

Toshiba (creator of the HD-DVD standard) announced yesterday that it is dropping the format in favor of rival standard Blu-Ray. Following announcements in the past few weeks from content distributors Warner Bros. and Universal, this move by Toshiba pretty much seals the fate of HD-DVD.

What's that? You didn't know there was a "battle" going on? Yeah, luckily, most consumers have been sitting on the sidelines with little urge to take a chance on buying the wrong player -- most of which are still north of $400. Plus, the movies themselves are $25-35. Do regular DVDs look that bad on your big-screen?

Whatever the technical merits of the opposing formats, Blu-Ray had better marketing, a sexier name, and a better ability to rally business allies.

Geek postscript: Blu-Ray refers to the fact that the players use a blue laser beam to read from the disk. Blue has a much shorter wavelength than more commonly used red lasers, so it can be used to read smaller bits of data -- allowing more high-def data to be crammed onto a single disk.