HD DVD is dead, get your discs while they’re hot.

OK, so as much as I hate to say it, I was wrong. I’m not wrong very often, but this time I was really, really, really wrong.

Apparently, Toshiba is going to drop HD DVD in the coming months and no amount of whining or crying from me is going to do anything to stop it.

The final nail in the coffin for HD DVD came Friday when super-mega-gargantuan retailer Wal-Mart joined the Blu-ray only bandwagon along with Best Buy and Netflix. When I heard that news, I also started hearing the death knoll for HD DVD.

And now, this article shows up from Reuters proclaiming the impending demise of my personal favorite HD format.

Blast. I just got an external HD DVD drive for my 360 at Christmas.

But I have a theory as to why we’ll all soon be watching Blu-ray and not HD DVD. It may seem silly to you, but by the time I’m done, you’ll agree.

Really, when it comes down to it, the Blu-ray camp just did a much better job of marketing their product than the HD DVD guys.

How much cooler of a name is "Blu-ray" than HD DVD? I mean, we’ve already had DVDs. They’ve been around for a while now. HD DVD doesn’t sound like something that most people would want to buy. They figure, "Oh, is that some new DVD? I’ve already got one of those."

But Blu-ray? Blu-ray sounds new. It sounds different. "Blu-ray? What is that? Sounds like something from Star Trek. Must be the cool new thing."

Just think about how many CDs would have been sold had they been called "Optical cassettes". Not very many.

But Blu-ray? It has the sexy sound. The pitch. The cool factor. Heck, my dad even got one. And even after I had tried to explain HD DVD to him. He didn’t get it. But for some reason, he got Blu-ray.

And now, I’m going to have to get it. Whether I want to or not.

But not before I pick up some great deals over at Amazon at their HD DVD sale

There is a silver lining to every dark cloud, and mine just happens to be the silver coming from a robot in Transformers. Yippee.