The battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD is still on-going with no signs of a clear leader. Blu-ray has the edge in that they have what appears to be a larger selection of supporters amongst the movie, game, software, and drive market. In fact, HD DVD does not even have a recordable drive on the market and Blu-ray is well into their second generation of recordable drives. The key advantages HD DVD seems to have right now is that the players are cheaper and it’s considerably less expensive for the replication plants to switch their lines to HD DVD as apposed to Blu-ray.

Recently both the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps have announced price reductions for various products. It’s clear that Toshiba (for HD DVD) is focused on trying to lure the video market by lower the price of their entry-level HD-A2 model players to $299.99 with in store rebate. This is approx. $300 lower than most Blu-ray players hoping to grab more consumers leading to a higher demand in HD DVD content.

Blu-ray is taking another approach by reaching out to a wider audience. Recently Pioneer announced that the BDC-2202 Blu-ray drive can be added to their PC systems for $300. The device also includes software that can record video from camcorders directly to DVD or Blu-ray discs. In trying to reach out to the growing consumer and business markets which are creating their own content, Blu-ray is attempting to reach a broader audience. Millions of drives are installed in PC’s every year as a standard accessory and Blu-ray looks to be preparing themselves to take over that market.

In the end, there are more players looking to offer dual capabilities so that you can play both the Blu-ray and HD DVD discs, as no one wants to have an obsolete player because the format they chose lost and went the way of the dinosaurs. Currently, only Blu-ray looks to be capitalizing on the recordable market and that could be the factor that swings success in their favor. We will see.