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Jack Milton/Staff PhotographerSteve Mattson is home theater supervisor at Best Buy in South Portland. Now that Sony’s Blu-ray format has prevailed, the only HD DVD players the store had left were five for the Xbox 360 gaming system.

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Steve Mattson is home theater supervisor at Best Buy in South Portland. Now that Sony’s Blu-ray format has prevailed, the only HD DVD players the store had left were five for the Xbox 360 gaming system.

COMPARING FORMATS

Blu-ray

DEVELOPER: Sony, also manufactured by LG, and Samsung and Panasonic

PRICE: $300 - $1,000

PICTURE: 1080p resolution, five times standard DVD

SOUND: 7.1 surround sound capable of translating Dolby TruHD and dts HD

CONNECTIVITY: None. Players with BD Live with Internet connection due in spring

DVD CAPACITY: 50 GB maximum on dual layer disc

GAMING: Built-in Blu-ray player in PlayStation 3

HD DVD

DEVELOPER: Toshiba

PRICE: Under $300

PICTURE: 1080p resolution, five times standard DVD

SOUND: 7.1 surround sound capable of translating Dolby TruHD and dts HD

CONNECTIVITY: Allows users to download additional content from the Internet

DVD CAPACITY: 30 GB maximum on dual layer disc

GAMING: Add-on HD DVD player available for Xbox 360

Did anyone cry when Betamax died?

Tears and anger may have been just a part of the stages of grieving when Sony's video format faded into obscurity in the 1980s. It left a share of devotees stuck with bulky, incompatible equipment that would be largely useless, as the rest of the world moved forward with the format of the future -- VHS.

Only a few decades later, the next evolution in home entertainment has again produced winners and losers.

With Toshiba's announcement that it would discontinue production of its HD DVD players, Sony and its Blu-ray technology stand as the sole survivor in the battle of next-generation DVD technology.

For two years, the companies had divided the market in hopes of attracting enough consumers and industry partners to become the heir-apparent to standard definition DVD. Now, owners of HD DVD players may be feeling like they made the wrong bet and are stuck with another addition to the dead technology graveyard.

HD DVD players will play standard DVDs, but there won't be any new releases on the format.

Some people are looking to make the best of their HD DVD purchase. Julia Trefethen, who lives in Wells, bought an HD DVD player off eBay for Christmas for $145. Now she's selling it for $100 on CraigsList.

"I'm basically going to see if I could recoup some of my potential loss," she said.

Trefethen said she's getting rid of the player because Netflix no longer carries HD DVDs, but also because the machine's better picture and sound quality are wasted on her older TV.

Though she followed the news about changes in the format, Trefethen said, she wishes HD DVD would be phased out more gradually.

"I wish there was more of a warning, if they had a time frame like a year or so away," she said. "It's such short notice."

When HD DVD and Blu-ray debuted in 2006, both promised stunning picture quality and rich sound to take advantage of the high definition TVs more Americans are putting in their homes.

Similar in size to standard definition DVDs, Blu-ray discs can store as much as 50 GB of data, where HD DVD maxes out at 30 GB. That increased storage lets filmmakers shoot higher-quality film and provide more extras on DVDs.

One advantage HD DVD had was Internet connectivity, which allowed additional content such as trailers to be downloaded from the Web. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD can play standard DVDs with a slight picture improvement, through a process called upconverting.

Where HD DVD boasted the support of studios such as Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks, Blu-ray had 20th Century Fox, MGM Studios and The Walt Disney Company and subsidiaries like Miramax Entertainment.

Through a partnership with Microsoft, consumers could buy an HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360.

Sony included Blu-ray players in PlayStation 3 consoles, which may have helped consumer adoption. According to the company, more than 1.2 million PS3 units sold in North America from Black Friday though December.

At the beginning of the year, the outlook turned bleak for Toshiba, as Warner Bros. stopped producing DVDs in both formats in favor of Blu-ray. DVD rental company Netflix also sided with Blu-ray, followed by retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

Toshiba says just over 1 million HD DVD players have been sold, with 300,000 of them coming from Xbox 360 components.

Chris Thibodeau of Biddeford got the HD DVD player for his Xbox 360 for Christmas.

He's got about 10 movies in HD DVD format, and he's hoping to find a few more at reduced prices.

Though he also listed the add-on player for sale on CraigsList, he thinks he'll hold onto it to use as a regular DVD player.

Pointing to PlayStation's success, Thibodeau said having a DVD player built in to a video game console makes all the difference.

"As far as I am concerned, it would have been more appealing to...