Although you have probably read other hundreds of articles regarding the war of the next generation optical formats, this one is surely one of the most important. The Forrester Research company said a few days ago that the Blu-Ray technology is the winner of the competition.

Both sides have tried to attract as many supporters from the IT and entertainment domains as possible. There have also been many statements in which supporters from both sides said that the other format will fail.

However, it seems that the Blu-Ray format is more likely to win the battle whose result we will know for sure in the spring of 2006. At least that's the conclusion reached by Forrester Research, which believes that Sony and the other Blu-Ray supporters have more chances to win the confrontation.

The key aspect in this battle is the number of supporters each technology has gathered. And Blu-Ray has the upper hand here, this format enjoying the support of more IT producers and Hollywood studios. Sony has certainly learned a lot from the Betamax - VHS conflict in the 1980's, when the latter has prevailed thanks to the higher number of supporters.

So far, the talks aimed at unifying the formats resulted in failure. HD-DVD representatives hope that both formats will be successful, but they are still open to an agreement regarding the unified format.

Despite the fact that Blu-Ray has an obvious edge over HD-DVD, there is still room for improvements. According to Reuters, HP asked the makers of Blu-ray to include two technologies in its specifications now supported by HD-DVD. One is known as mandatory managed copy, allowing users to copy high-definition movies onto PCs from discs and distribute them on home network. The other is called iHD, which provides for new interactive features and is slated to be implemented in Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system.