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Apple had been widely expected to introduce the first Blu-ray support in Macs by this week, but the unveiling of new Mac Pros came and went without mention of, or support for, the Sony technology.

Instead Apple chief executive Steve Jobs believes that HD discs have already had their day. Clearly Blu-ray has won, he told CNBC, but in the future no one will care. They will get all their HD content over the Internet.

Obviously, Jobs is far from neutral observer, since his company is by far the dominant provider of movie downloads. But the sales figures agree with him.

Since HD DVD went on sale in April 2006, 2.5 million movies have been sold. Blu-ray, which made its debut two months later, has easily exceeded that with six million. Apple was last to the party, and unlike Blu-ray has content from only two major Hollywood

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studio. Yet it has sold seven million movies since September 2006. More than Blu-ray in three fewer months.

Blu-ray advocates were quick to reject Jobs' argument.

"What he failed to mention about Apple's iTunes HD movies is that they're only encoded in 720p, half the resolution of Blu-ray, which encodes all film content at 1080p (Full HD)," said Blu-ray.com's Josh Dreuth. "The result is a picture which is only half as sharp, half as colourful, and half as beautiful as Blu-ray. Furthermore, only some of the iTunes HD movies have surround sound, and those that do only make use of the archaic Dolby Digital technology. Anyone who has listened to a PCM, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD Master Audio track knows that there is simply nothing that can compare to a lossless/uncompressed audio track."

Though the very success of iTunes and iPod suggests the opposite - that most people are quite happy with compressed audio.

Scott Hettrick of Hollywood in Hi-Def accepts that iTunes and Apple TV is a "wonderful" to enjoy movies and TV shows, "but they do not negate or replace my primary desire of watching a movie, when possible, in full 1080p hi-def on my 42in and 65in plasma displays with surround sound".

Hettrick adds that Blu-ray discs can also be lent to friends and family and are packed with extras such as audio commentaries, making-of documentaries, bloopers, deleted scenes, trailers and "interactivities".