Sony settles an old score

Lose one, win one.

When the latest high-definition video fight finished this month, it was sweet vindication for the loser in the first format war. And it was one more sign of the might of Wal-Mart, which now has the power to pick winners and losers in both America and Japan.

Sony's Blu-ray disks - already endorsed by several big players in the business - last week got the nod from the Bentonville leviathan, which said that it would no longer sell HD DVDs, a rival format championed by Toshiba. That sealed HD DVD's fate, and on Tuesday, Toshiba and its partners bowed to the will of Wal-Mart.

Sony's victory represents revenge for the loser of video's first major format war a quarter century ago, which ended when the company's superior Betamax videotape technology was overwhelmed by cheaper VHS.

Once a single videotape format was decided, the VCR quickly spread to almost every house in America. Sony and its collaborators hope the same will now happen with Blu-ray disks, which are built into the company's PlayStation 3 game player, a sleek black Trojan horse of video technology.

High-definition disks produce a picture far sharper than a regular DVD, though you have to have both a television capable of displaying the resolution, and eyes capable of telling the difference.

You also had to be able to predict the future. Until the marketplace decided, consumers faced a complicated technology and a complicated decision between two alternatives. With no clear winner, people were hesitant to buy gear or even a movie, not knowing whether it would be obsolete before they got it home.

That's why the fight over something as arcane as a video format, in the end, actually matters to people and to the economy. Sony knows that the Blu-ray victory will help it sell more video game consoles, even to people who don't play games.

The other winners - that would be Sony partners Sharp, Philips, Panasonic, Disney and Fox - are now in the best position to sell a ton of new electronics and movies to the people who have been waiting, wallets in pockets, for a winner to emerge in the high-definition format fight.