High costs, catfights and the internet will conspire to send both optical discs formats to an early grave.

It’s interesting to see some of the mainstream IT media are now starting to question whether anyone is really interested in the next-generation optical disc formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray.

In a sense, it’s a bit of a misnomer to call them “next-generation” because they are already here but in the minds and certainly the wallets of most consumers, they remain “next-generation” by simple virtue that DVD is still holding sway in most households.

Both formats obviously have the ability to show amazing video and audio quality but despite plenty of PR spin to the contrary, do both formats actually have a long-term future in the way DVD has had?

Surely, HD DVD is in the weaker position. In Australia for example, Toshiba is the only hardware vendor making HD DVD home theatre players and they’ve only just become available recently, after two launches. As far as a storage media however, there are still no consumer or PC-based recording devices for HD DVD in Australia.

Blu-ray on the other is in a stronger position with a greater array of component players, more brands making those players and greater recording support on the desktop.

Then you have the complication of HDMI – the new High-Definition Multimedia Interface with its HDCP copy-protection preventing full HD output unless you have an HDMI-compliant telly on the other side. The fear or piracy has made HD video an expensive option for most consumers.

But with Pioneer and now Asus offering low-cost Blu-ray/DVD combo drives that play Blu-ray movie discs and write to DVDs and CDs, HD DVD is in severe danger of irrelevancy in Australia.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive may well be the cheapest playback option of them all but it is certainly failing to hit any sort of mark in the PC market.

However, while things are better for Blu-ray, you’re not seeing a huge uptake of recording devices on the PC platform at the moment.

Recordable discs are still selling for well over $AUD20 ($US18) and the re-writeable media for over $AUD35 ($US31), which certainly isn’t helping their appeal.

It’s not surprising then that HD piracy is becoming a booming enterprise on the internet. With Blu-ray and HD DVD movie encryption have been cracked by groups on the web, the ability to digitally copy or “rip” those discs has seen a slew of HD rips appearing on torrent sites around the globe.

But looking into the future, could big-screen entertainment evolve into the AppleTV concept and its tie-in with YouTube? Could we instead of sitting and watching a two-hour movie, simply watch our favourite clips on YouTube instead? The fact that YouTube with help from Apple has been in the process of moving its entire library of clips from Flash video to the higher-quality H.264 format goes some way to showing that internet video is becoming a serious alternative source for many viewers.

With free-to-air TV broadcast companies beginning to offer episodes of TV shows over the Internet, online HD video will simply continue to expand through its ease of use of cheapness of price.

In some countries, the only fly in the online video ointment is slow Internet speeds. Debate rages ahead of the Australian federal election over just how good “high-speed” internet should be, especially in the bush where competing ideas from both sides of government show neither actually has much of an idea.

But with the ability of high-quality low-bandwidth online video in combination with HD free-to-air TV broadcasting adding to the constant catfight that is the Blu-ray/HD DVD war, it wouldn’t surprise me to see either disc format to eventually go belly-up.