OTHER TECH

For the past five years, DVD has been the bright beam of sunshine spreading across the home-entertainment landscape, not only heating up movie sales and rentals but also, with its first-rate images and sound, helping to spark the whole home theater trend.

The arrival of high-definition discs would seem to indicate continued fair weather. But a few storm clouds are gathering because there are two high-def formats - HD DVD and Blu-ray - and they're incompatible.

Each format has its merits. HD DVD, developed and supported primarily by Toshiba and NEC, has almost four times the capacity of a standard DVD. And it's being touted as a much less expensive changeover than Blu-ray since it's based on the DVD and the discs can be made on existing production lines with minor modifications. But Blu-ray's strengths are also impressive: much more capacity than HD DVD and the backing of more than a dozen powerhouse consumer-electronics and computer companies, including Sony, Dell, and Panasonic (see "The Rivals at a Glance" below). But it might be the considerable weight of the Hollywood movie studios that determines which format prevails in the end.