LG is about to get it right...

So LG has announced their dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray player? Fantastic. Time Warner goes so far as to create dual-format discs? Pop open the bubbly. But you know something? It didn't take long for my initial feeling of elation to give way to 100% certified organic bile.

Absolutely none of this was necessary. Remember DVD, the little media format that could (and turns ten in a few months)? It seems like ancient history now, but it took some time for the various companies to agree on a single format back then. While it's something of a cliché to mention the Betamax/VHS videocassette format war these days, in the mid-1990s Sony had only just closed up the Betamax shop. I'd like to think that, with Sony still smarting, retailers unhappily clearing out excess Betamax stock and Betamax owners angrily trying to figure out what to do with their machines and tapes, the companies realized things go a lot smoother when everyone agrees at the outset.

It's hard to argue with the result. The DVD format was adopted pretty quickly and has gone on to remake the movie and home video industries; and we've now gotten to the point where DVD utterly dominates the home video landscape.

Then, just in case anyone though that was DVD's uptake was a fluke, there came the DVD+R/DVD-R debacle, where consumers had to decide which format they'd commit their data or video archives to. When Sony came out with the first multi-format burners, consumers breathed a collective sigh of relief.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the entertainment and tech industries had plenty of evidence to show that just agreeing on a single format is best for everyone involved, saving a lot of time, energy and money. But no, they had to go off into their separate rooms, and the results of that intransigence -- including the eventual appearance of dual-format players -- were predictable.

Years ago, Simpsons creator Matt Groening related his frustration with trying to make a Simpsons movie in the nineties. As he related it, during one of the meetings with all the%