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There are more stories every other day about this HD DVD war and “who will win?” I loved 300 but… I knew who was winning and who wasn’t. Reality has to settle in at some point as this stand is nowhere near as sexy or meaningful. OK. OK. I know the Giants recently defied great odds and beat the Patriots (I picked them to win by 3 btw : ) ) but this format “war” is ridiculous at this point, IMHO. Today, there are a couple more giants jumping to Blu-ray over HD-DVD: Best Buy and Netflix. The momentum has been growing for a while now and looks to be too fast to stop.

Best Buy, the largest U.S. consumer electronics chain, said on Monday it will recommend that consumers choose Sony Corp’s Blu-ray high-definition video format.

The decision gives Sony yet another victory in the battle with Toshiba Corp’s HD DVD to be the high-definition DVD format of choice.

Earlier on Monday, online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said it would exclusively stock Blu-ray DVDs after some of the world’s biggest movie studios decided in favor of that format.

Best Buy said it believes consumers will benefit from the choice of one HD DVD format.

“Because we believe that Blu-ray is fast emerging as that single format, we have decided to focus on Blu-ray products,” Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

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Yes, the first big hit of 2007 will arrive the last day of July in two DVD versions as well as HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

The special edition DVD and both high-def versions of the movie will also include 90 minutes of extras including additional scenes. Also, on the HD-DVD version will be a first-of-its-kind strategy game.

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The missing consumer link in the move to HDTV is a universal DVD player that would accommodate both the new HD DVD and Blue-ray formats. Such a player could be coming soon, thanks to Broadcom Corp., which on Thursday unveiled a system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution that aims to be a foundation for companies looking to build dual-format player.

The Broadcom single-chip BCM7440 Blue-ray/HD DVD SoC features a software stack complaint with both of the warring DVD specifications.

Will there be a universal player, Doug Grearson, Broadcom senior marketing manager, was asked. “The short answer is, absolutely,” Grearson said. “It helps that the two formats are fairly close to begin with. Once you can read the disks you have reduced it to reading bitstreams.”

Grearson noted that the video and audio compression solutions used by each format are virtually the same.

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