I'm not usually into calling elections early, but if you heard the buzz on the CES show floor, then you'd know the bell is tolling for HD DVD. The first death blow came the other day when Warner Brothers decided to bail on supporting both formats and declared its Blu-ray support. The scuttlebutt I hear is that Universal will be following suit shortly. Seems that the initial contracts many vendors signed with HD DVD are coming up for renewal, or not.

Here in Vegas, the HD DVD press conference was cancelled on very short notice. Toshiba issued a press release saying this was a setback but that it did not mean defeat.

Reuters covered the Toshiba statements at a press conference held on Sunday evening.

The happiest people on the show floor are probably the retailers because they finally have an inkling about which products to stock—both players and movies. The second happiest group are consumers, because not only do they know what to buy, but the prices have fallen to new lows because of the competitive arena.

If you've been sitting on the fence about Blu-ray and HD DVD, I think jumping is pretty safe now. On the other hand, if you're like me, you might just want to skip the whole thing and download your movies via the 'net. More on that later.