CHMIELEWSKI lWait for dust to settle in HD format fray

beat it to market. The first HDDVD players and movies — initially planned for the holiday season — will reach stores in March.

The Blu- ray group has been comparatively vague about its launch plans and pricing. But one high- profile product that will use Blu- ray technology, Sony’s PlayStation 3, is expected to be unveiled in May, to coincide with the game industry’s annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. It’ll probably reach U. S. consumers before the end of next year.

Don’t expect HD-DVD or Blu- ray to surrender before these devices reach a consumer electronics store near you. The developers of each format hold patents that could prove wildly lucrative if these next- generation discs catch on with consumers as quickly as DVDs. But that won’t happen as long as consumers are confused about which format will emerge as the new standard.

No one wants to be the owner of the next Betamax.

The new high- definition discs offer more vivid color, sharper contrast and see- every- pore detail than DVDs. But it’s not as dramatic an improvement in picture quality as, say, the leap from videotape to DVD.

And that kind of peerthroughthe- window clarity only works with high- definition TVs. That shrinks the potential audience to the 16 million or so people in the United States who own HDTVs — a fraction of the 110 million households with televisions, according to researcher In- Stat.

The early HD-DVD players will sell for $ 1,000 — limiting their appeal to only the most affluent early- adopters. Even if Sony’s PlayStation 3 is priced like the Xbox 360, at $ 400 it’s hardly an impulse buy.

These new high- definition discs will sell for a premium, too, as the studios pack them with interactive features, such as games and downloadable movie trailers, to justify the added cost. Who knows how many movies there will be?

In- Stat estimates there’ll be about 2 million high- definition players in America by 2009, compared with nearly 90 million DVD players. That means it’ll remain a luxury item, at least for the foreseeable future.

If I were you, I’d wait until the DVD dies before checking out one of these next- generation players. Contact Dawn C. Chmielewski at dchmielewski@ mercurynews . com or ( 800) 643- 1902.