peace in the format wars

Several years ago i was big into media. OK, i still am - but i used to be really into it. I had a website design company, and was working on a media transfer company. I would charge people to transfer old home movies to DVD, records to CD's, etc.

To do this i needed a DVD recorder for my PC. At the time, DVD recordable formats were unsettled. There were 2 competing formats (+ or -) and no one knew who would win out. However, based on past history (beta/VHS, etc) it was conventional wisdom that only one format would win.

So, in order to ensure that I would be able to record to whichever type of DVD survived the war, i talked my wife into letting me shell out nearly $400 for a four-format external DVD recorder. I could have spent $200 on one that just recorded one of the two formats, but i wanted to make sure i was good for years to come... Within months, four format drives were standard and going for less than $150. I still occasionally apologize to my wife for that one. by the Way...no format won out as i thought they would. We now exist in a world with more than 6 formats existing quite nicely together.

So...keeping that story in mind, check this out:
LG to release hybrid DVD player for Blu-ray and HD-DVD

(For the record, i am not planning on purchasing any HD or Blu-Ray players for some time. At this point there aren't enough titles. That and i'd rather just wait a few months for the online services to offer the movies for download, since i always rip my movies onto my network drive anyway.)