With Blu-ray devices rolling out the door, you can begin to feel the heat of competition as a new DVD media standards war begins to brew. We have all heard the whole song and dance surrounding HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but what will this mean for the consumer?

This a hard thing to really nail down at this point. On top of that, I believe that it is frankly too early to say for sure anyway.

Fierce competition is heating up between data storage technologies Blu-ray and high-definition DVD to become the next de facto standard format for DVDs.

“The winner of this conflict could go on to become the biggest data storage medium in the market, and early signs in the industry forecast a slight tilt in favour of Blu-ray,” said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Rajesh Kannan.

The analyst firm expects Blu-ray to edge ahead as the preferred choice for optical archival storage. Although this is good news for Blu-ray proponents, being positioned as the next-generation optical storage format leaves the technology open to intense competition.