Tangled up in Blu

You may be itching to buy a Blu-ray DVD player now that the format has won the high-definition disc standard war, but you may want to hold off a bit before scratching that itch. By waiting a few months, you could save yourself some irritation – and a few bucks toboot.

Blu-ray players are theoretically ideal complements to high-definition televisions because they can play movies formatted to take full advantage of an HD display. But until recently, a battle raged between two competing formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. The competition limited sales, in part because consumers worried about getting stuck with an obsolete machine.