When Blockbuster announced a couple weeks back that it would only be stocking Blu-ray discs when it rolls out high-def titles to 1,450 stores, it was taken as a sign that Sony’s Blu-ray disc would be the victor of the format war.

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But don’t raise the Sony arm in victory quite yet. HD DVD backers fought back last week in what has become a PR war to this point. To counter the Blockbuster news and the momentum Blu-ray gained, it was released that HD DVD will have new, internet-based features that blu-ray does not. Some features, like the ability to watch other movie trailers, change menu styles and subtitles, and participate in surveys, are interesting add-ons but nothing that gets the heart longing for the HD DVD format in particular.

This next feature, however, could very well be.

The HD DVD version of “300” will allow users to re-edit the movie, selecting and ordering the scenes as they see fit, and upload their edit to a server hosted by the studio, Warner Bros. The edit will be accessible to other users, who can download it to their players and see the movie in its new form.

Will this be enough to woo users over to HD DVD? The majority of people probably don’t have the time or interest to re-edit films, but the early adopters of high definition home theaters are not your casual movie watcher. They are likely major movie buffs and/or technology geeks and this new feature could be highly alluring to such a crowd.

While, Sony’s Blu-ray has a much wider backing from Hollywood, plus now the backing of Blockbuster and added benefit that anyone that owns a Playstaion 3 will be a Blu-ray connoisseur, the race is still (unfortunately for the consumer) in its first leg and won’t be resolved anytime soon. Among sales of players (exluding PlayStasion 3’s) Toshiba’s HD DVD is ahead 70-30 over Blu-ray, according to market researh company NPD.

And with this race, like the presidential primary race, it will likely come down to who gains a solid footing first. Who will win Iowa and New Hampshire is what matters. All the rest will fall in line after that.

Unfortunately there is no date set for picking a winner in high def DVD format and with the confusion among consumers and the still hefty price of HD sets the DVD election won’t occur until well after Dubya is out of office.

The good news for consumers is that by the time all this shakes out we’ll likely have a viable third party candidate in the form of cable VOD, IPTV or Apple TV. My money (figuratively, I am not an investor in Apple stock) is on Apple. Heck, if Apple can create such a frenzy over a phone, to the point that some camped out overnight to get one, imagine the fever created over completely nonlinear TV and virtually any film on-demand.

For a nice, detailed overview and analysis of the format war, past present and future, check out this article at Digital Bits.