Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) declared that BD+ is so strong that it would not be breached for at least 10 years.

Well a company named Slysoft and makers of AnyDVD claim to have cracked BD+ encryption (only eight months after Doherty's statement/dare) and have included the decryption tool in the latest release of their software. Slysoft claims that Blu-ray owners will now be able to "backup" their disks using AnyDVD.

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: