Strike Over, Blu-Ray Wins

Not sure if the announcements are related, but both are certainly welcome.

First, if you've been living under a TV rock... the Writers' Guild of America has settled their strike, scoring a share of income from new media sales. Production companies all over L.A. are now falling all over themselves, ramping production up for the April returns of SOME of your favorites. some of your favorites (well, MY favorites) won't be back until next season.

And Jack Bauer will be sitting things out until January '09. Boo,

The worst of it is that now that all of this production frenzy is underway, unagented writers (like myself) can forget about getting anyone's attention for about nine months. Such is life.

The other development in the world of home theatre is the death of HD-DVD. Seems along aboutTuesday, Netflix announced they would no longer be carrying HD-DVD copies of any future releases. It got worse. Wednesday, Wal-Mart made the same announcement.

Toshiba, the creator of HD-DVD, promptly folded the format into a tidy little ball and tossed it into the dumpster next to Sony's BetaMax.

Sony wins the format war this time. Blu-Ray DVD promises oh-so much. And with prices for the Blu-Ray players orbiting at about $600, that $399 Playstation 3 (which doubles as a Blu-Ray DVD player) is looking more and more attractive.

And who doesn't want to play a little Madden '08 in HD?