Verisign will be increasing the wholesale price of .com domains from $6.42 to $6.86 and .net from $3.85 to $4.23. They are using the maximum 7% increase allowed under Verisign's contract with ICANN which runs through 2012.

You can bet registrars will be passing on the cost to consumers. The new prices are scheduled to take effect in October.

Since the announcement that Toshiba was giving up its HD-DVD format prices of Blu-Ray players have risen sharply.

A quick price scan from BestBuy.com comparing Blu-ray players prices on January 1st vs. March 12th show a ~14-30% increase for some of the most popular brands:

* Sony’s BDP-S300 rose 30% ($307 to $399)
* Panasonic’s DMP-BD30K rose 19% ($399 to $449)
* Samsung’s BD-P1400 rose 18% ($329 to $399)

How did Blu-ray come out on top? I'm sure we'll see many Harvard Business Review case studies on this. Everyone is already comparing this to the modern day VHS vs Betamax battle of the early 80s.

Just like Betamax Toshibas HD DVD format looked very good.

- They were first to market
- Quality was just as good as blu-ray
- Extra capacity for movie extras
- Lower cost for disk production. HD DVD didn't need blue laser diodes
- Almost just as many movie titles as blu-ray.

In hindsight they made several strategic mistakes: