Well, it's begun. Toshiba is releasing an HD-DVD player in March at $499, while Sony is releasing its Blu-Ray Disc in the Summer. Launch titles have been announced, and battle lines have been drawn. And its about to get ugly.

So where does that leave Star Wars in HD? Rumors are circulating that when the Complete DVD set comes out in 2007 for the Thirtieth Anniversary, an HD boxset (whichever format) would possibly be there with it.

20th Century Fox supports the Blu-Ray Disc Format exclusively, and would probably love to have the Star Wars films on that format. After all, that would be a pretty big proton torpedo in HD-DVD's exhaust port.

But with HD-DVD players coming out so much cheaper than Blu-Ray, will consumers by a player as much as twice the cost? Even though it will be built into the new PS3, there's an HD-DVD add on component for the Xbox 360 coming later this year, so that cuts out the console advantage just a bit. Blu-Ray has more studio support, but the launch titles for HD-DVD are just as impressive, and films like King Kong and Superman Returns are both slated to come out on HD-DVD. And another 800-pound gorilla, Microsoft, is giving HD-DVD its full support.

I do feel Blu-Ray Disc will be the eventual winner, but there are definitely some points in HD-DVD's Favor. In fact, I just preordered one from Best Buy for $314.00, which isn't much more than I paid for my first DVD player. And that was after they'd been out for about 3 years. If Blu-ray starts in the $800-$1000 range, I'll definitely be waiting a year or two (or more) before I can pick up one of those. For the immediate future, and until one format clearly wins this format war, I may have 2 hi-def disc players in my entertainment center.

The one saving grace? Both formats still play existing DVDs. In fact, they will both upconvert the signal to HD, so your standard DVDs will look better than they did on your old DVD player (though not as good as the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs will).

For those interested in the player I bought, here's the link. I believe its cheaper if you preorder it in-store, rather than on the external website.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7652523&type=product&id=1134699969167