Yep, there you have it. Only days after LG announced the first hybrid player capable of accepting both HD formats, Warner announced that they are planning to produce a hybrid disk capable of playing in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players. And I have to say that after a year of war I'm pretty stunned to see 2 opposite concepts appearing in a matter of days. And what's even stranger is that both of them could lead to a truce.

Regarding the hybrid disk or "Total HD" as it is being called by Warner, some things need to be cleared up in order to understand how it works. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD use a standard 405nm wavelength laser to read data from the recordable media of the discs. While the data layer of the Blu-ray discs is located 0.1mm from the disk's surface, the HD-DVD data layer resides a lot deeper (0.6mm deep from the disk's surface).

Total-HD has both layers on the same side so all players will be able to see the content without being bothered by the second layer. As a matter of fact, one could even install a 3rd layer on the other side of the disk if need be for SD-DVD content on the same media. But I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

"The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats and to make that not a negative for the consumer. We felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn't want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them," said Barry M. Meyer (chairman and chief executive of Warner Brothers) earlier in an interview.

I really don't know what's better here. If I take Warner's disk then all the manufacturers who build players (such as Sony for Blu-Ray and Toshiba for HD-DVD) will hate Warner forever. On the other hand, if I shall take the hybrid player, all the Hollywood studios that are affiliated to only one of the formats will hang LG. I don't know what will eventually come out of this nonsense, but one thing's for sure: the HD war is about to end.