Once again, it is time to upgrade to the latest and greatest thing to come out of your local electronics retail store.

It seems like only yesterday that a geeky Best Buy clerk told you to get rid of your (now ancient) VHS, but the express train that is technological progress waits for no one and it’s time to move from DVDs to Blu-ray discs.

For those of you who have been out of the technological loop, Blu-ray (developed by Sony) is the new optical storage disc media format; in layman’s terms, it’s the new way to watch movies, play video games and store data on discs.

For a while the Blu-ray format had some stiff competition from the High-Definition DVD, or HD DVD, format that was developed by Toshiba but didn’t have the same advantages of Blu-ray.

The biggest advancement with Blu-ray discs is the ungodly amount of space they provide. Your average dual-layer DVD can hold up to 9 gigabytes (gigs for short) of data. To put things in perspective, that iPod you’re rocking probably has 30 gigs of space, which translates into 6,000 songs or 30 movies. A dual-layer Blu-ray disc can hold up to 55 gigs of information.

But do you really need all that space?

Well, believe it or not, the picture quality of video on DVD is nowhere near theater quality.

Higher-definition images take up a lot more space, so many production companies compress the contents of the disc, lowering the quality, so they are able to fit the movie on a DVD.

In addition, most movies have tons of extras (like deleted scenes, different endings and commentary) they would want to include with the movie but can’t due to the relatively small storage capacity of DVDs.

So the question you might be asking is, how? Well, the answer isn’t because of a physically bigger disc. In short, it’s because of the blue laser that reads and writes the disc roughly 40 percent faster than a normal red-laser DVD and HD DVD.

Usually, these format decisions are left up to free market competition, but this time the decision was made (more or less) by big movie conglomerates and Wal-Mart.

Companies like Warner Bros. and Disney decided that they would “pledge their allegiance” to Sony and its Blu-ray format. They agreed that all future high-definition titles would be released exclusively on Blu-ray. Soon thereafter, Wal-Mart put the final nail in the coffin when the company decided it would no longer carry HD DVDs.

Some opponents of Blu-ray say that the format allows for much more region coding, Digital Rights Media, or DRM, filters and other security measures that prevent you from doing things like taking music from the iTunes music store and transferring it to any non-iPod MP3 player.

Though this is a fair criticism, I disagree because the entire computing community is now heading toward more open-source coding. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates have both made public comments about doing away with DRM and other security formatting. Bill Gates has said “(DRM) causes too much pain for legitimate buyers,” and Steve Jobs is having iTunes implement a new sales plan, in May, in which all music will be DRM free.

Now before you start cursing out Sony as you throw away your movie collection, realize that DVDs will not be phased out for a long time. This is mainly because to watch movies in high definition you first need to own a high-definition TV.

Currently, only 28 percent of Americans own HDTVs and only 50 percent of HDTV owners actually subscribe to HD programming, according to engadget.com. That number is supposed to double by 2012. So you have a little time to save up so you can completely restock your movie library with Blu-ray discs.

Normally, I don’t like it when heads of companies make choices for me. I am a firm believer in the best product winning through competition, but for once, I’m happy with the choice made for me.

Paul is a junior in computer and political science and is not a Sony fanboy because he loves his Xbox 360 (but wishes they would come out with a cheap Blu-ray drive).