So the high-definition DVD format war is over, and Blu-ray Disc is the apparent victor. But what was it all worth? How will the spoils of the format war compare with the bounty that Blu-ray’s pre-decessor, standard-definition DVD, enjoyed during its reign as the video optical-disk format king?

Blu-ray Disc has won the high-definition DVD format war, but new network delivery options give content owners an alternative to packaged media: advanced pay TV and Internet video.

Tokyo (Japan) - Panasonic claims that it is first to have succeeded in developing 6x Blu-ray write-once media, featuring a stunning data transfer speed of 216 Mb/s, which is almost 30% faster than a 16x DVD and almost four times quicker than a 48x CD drive.