I'm not sure who is going to "win" the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war to be the next standard for watching shows on everyone's new, high def televisions, but I wonder if, with either this round or one soon after, if it won't be a "both." We've already got serious competition from digital set boxes. I wonder if we'd even have a new disc player war if we hadn't had discs and VHSes before them. If not, I'm suspicious that set tops boxes would be the only choice; there'd just be a good number of them from which to choose.

Still, wouldn't Sony rather sell you two disc players than one? Or wouldn't Sony and Microsoft (one of HD DVD's fans) both like to sell you one? I'm pretty confident game console makers (Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox) are counting on many, many consumers owning more than one. With Nintendo's new Wii, selling someone their second console is all but their main strategy, it'd seem.

If we're not encouraged to buy Blu-ray and HD DVD players this generation, whatever comes next might very well be a both/and rather than either/or proposition.