A battle is raging. The arena? Your living room. The combatants? HD DVD and Blu-ray. The spoils? Dominion over the homeentertainment empire. Play caught up with Sony Picture’s Caroline Nelson, to find out just how well Sony’s fledgling format is faring, two years since it went head-to-head with HD DVD.

DVDs were great weren’t they? Ever since they strutted onto the scene in 1997, they’ve established an unshakable rule over the home-theatre market and have fast become one of the biggest success stories in the history of home entertainment. Sony hated them though. Why? Because DVD usurped Sony’s CD format, and the massive royalties DVD generated went straight into the pockets of its creator, Toshiba.

Ever since DVD’s ascension, Sony had been scheming hard to develop its own next-gen disc technology. Its solution was Blu-ray. Blu-ray gave Sony the storage needed to enable true next-gen gaming experiences and, if the format became dominant, it would give the company access to the royalties from home-movie sales that it has been missing out on. Of course, Toshiba was never going to take this lying down and, after Sony made its intentions clear, it soon announced the imminent arrival of its own nextgen successor to DVD – the inventively named – HD DVD.

Neither Sony nor Toshiba were willing to back down in the row over what format should become standardised (as Sony ended up doing with DVD), preferring to go at it tooth and claw in the entertainment section of stores across the globe. However, Sony was holding a trump card in this vicious battle; it was about to bring out the next version of the most successful console brand ever, the PlayStation 3 – and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what type of discs that system would be using.

The stage was set, and around 2005, the first few rounds were fired. Some pundits backed Blu-ray because of its superior picture quality, and its mighty ally, the PS3; while others rallied behind HD DVD, due to its low price and fearsome support from Bill ‘Microsoft’ Gates.

Two years on, and it now looks like Bluray is already starting to gain the upper hand. By convincing numerous players to switch to its side, including Dell, Hewlett- Packard, Panasonic and Mitsubishi, as well as 90 per cent of Hollywood film studios – such as Sony-owned Columbia and MGM – the carpet is being gradually swept from under HD DVD’s feet, as director of publicity at Sony Pictures, Caroline Nelson, explained to Play.

"Blu-ray now has gained overwhelming support from hardware manufacturers and content providers," said Nelson. "We have gained support from virtually all major CE manufacturers, 90 per cent of Hollywood studios and the world’s top computer brands. Plus Blu-ray Disc players and drives are currently available from nearly a dozen hardware companies, whereas HD DVD hardware is only available from Toshiba and Microsoft. This has put us in an incredibly strong position."

But the biggest boost to Blu-ray’s arsenal has been the launch of the PS3. Despite the console’s somewhat lacklustre performance compared to its predecessor, Nelson told us that the arrival of the PS3 has nevertheless had a meteoric impact on Blu-ray software sales, and Sony still maintains that the PS3 is its key weapon in the mission to install Blu-ray players into living rooms all over the world.

"In terms of Blu-ray software sales, these have already topped 180,000 across Europe, as of the beginning of July. However, sales of Blu-ray increased by 1,000 per cent since the launch of the PlayStation 3, pushing Blu-ray sales to 67 per cent of the total high-definition market," she said.

"In terms of hardware, Blu-ray’s 2007 projected sales of both players and consoles is estimated to reach 3.55 million units, whereas HD DVD players (including Xbox 360 HD DVD drives) is predicted to reach just 360,000 units," added Nelson.

It appears that Sony’s decision to stick with Blu-ray is starting to pay off. In its most recent coup, the electronics giant managed to convince major film retail outlet Blockbuster to exclusively stock Blu-ray discs, and analysts have also noted that in Australia, where the PS3 is week-on-week outselling the Wii and 360, Sony’s console is being strongly marketed as a Blu-ray player.

The battle isn’t over yet; each side still has their proponents, but it is looking increasingly likely that over the coming years Toshiba’s DVD format will begin to go the way of VHS – and HD DVD the way of Betamax – as we enter into a new, and much bluer, age of home entertainment.