Simply put, most people don't really know what they want. We say we want to protect North American jobs, yet we still shop at Walmart which gets many, if not most, of its products from Chinese factories. We say we want low-fat foods but McDonalds' 2006 revenue's have steadily increased year over year.

Steve Jobs and Apple have made a science of giving people what they really want with the iPod. Surveys would have you believe that consumers want an FM receiver, long battery life, and voice recording capabilities built into their portable media players. The various versions of the iPod contain none of these features yet it commands a huge portion of the portable media player market. Why is that?

People are emotional beings. That much is obvious. We love getting a product for a low price and feeling like we got a deal despite it weakening the North American economy. We enjoy the taste of a burger and fries even though we know they're not very good for the arteries. Its whats on the surface and what's happening right now that matters to most people despite what they would otherwise say.

When you ask someone if they'd buy a high-definition DVD player because it can give them more capacity, a better image, and improved sound, they'd say "Sure, I'd love that". The catch is the average Joe doesn't care too much strictly about disc capacity.

What most people really care about is that the disc they buy has a movie on it. DVD's already do that. I think the average consumer also doesn't care much about the difference between the great image of a DVD and the really great image of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. A standard DVD movie displayed on a good quality HDTV or CRT simply looks terrific. Thats what they "see", and they don't care about the technical differences. If they did, Betamax would have won.

The next gen formats may very well be victims of their own hype. With one group saying Blu-Ray is the future, and another saying its HD-DVD, how could the average consumer know which one to buy? Most people simply can't afford to buy both players at current prices, and players that support both formats won't be plentiful or affordable.

So what's a potential buyer to do? The answer there is to wait. And waiting is bad for business when two groups of powerful tech companies are trying to beat each other over a new format.

Until buyers know for sure which direction the looming format war is going to go, they're going to hold off dropping a few hundred bucks on a player and new discs.

You've got different groups of enthusiasts and experts who say HD-DVD has already won because of superior video quality, cheaper players, and more titles being available. Others claim Blu-Ray will be successful because current manufacturing problems are going to be ironed out sooner rather than later. They also point to the soon-to-be released PS3 that has the potential of putting a Blu-Ray drive in the living room of every Sony fanatic on the planet.

Any way you slice it, its going to take a few years before we know who's going to walk away from this fight.