Format wars. Theyâ''ve been the Achillesâ'' heel of the consumer electronics industry, and the bane of consumers, since the classic VHS vs. Beta battle of the early 1980s. Standards setting organizations and industry consortiums hold endless meetings to avoid them, yet still they break out with astounding regularity.

The battle of the blue disks seems, finally, to be over. For several years now, two separate industry alliances, one led by Sony, Panasonic, Philips, and others; the other by Toshiba, NEC, and others have battled over the next generation digital disk format. Both contendersâ''Blu-Ray Disc and HD-DVDâ''use blue lasers to read and write data, but differ in other key characteristics. Neither have obvious advantages to consumers, so most consumers simply didnâ''t purchase either.

On the eve of the International Consumer Electronics Show, now taking place in Las Vegas, Warner Bros., a movie studio that previously had been producing high definition movies for the home in both formats, announced that it was no longer going to support HD-DVD. The HD-DVD coalition immediately canceled its long-scheduled CES press conference, a move that seemed to signal surrender.

However, on Sunday, Toshiba executives, while admitting that they had had what was the worst 24 hours of their careers (and, if the hastily printed press releases handed out touting their broad line-up of standard DVD products were any indication, a number of those hours were spent at the local Kinkoâ''s), denied raising the white flag. They said that Toshiba continues to believe that HD-DVD is the best format for consumers. Many consumers are passionate about the technology as well, but that was also true for Betamax. So it seems that if youâ''ve been sitting on the proverbial fence before upgrading your home video system until now, you can go ahead and safely climb down on the Blu-Ray side.

But this does not mean that format wars are over for now. Because a new format war seems, quietly, to be heating up. Oh, the two sides are still in negotiations, and are

politely murmuring about working with industry groups towards a unified standard, but those murmurs might also be the sounds of players choosing up sides and gathering ammunition.

At stake? Mobile broadcast TV for the United States. Thatâ''s free, over-the-air local television, broadcast to a wide variety of consumer electronics devices, sent over broadcastersâ'' existing spectrum; not pay-for-service streaming video sent over a cell phone or special purpose network.

The idea has a lot going for it. With a tuner chip added to your cell phone, iPod, PDA, or other portable device, you will be able to watch local news, sports, weatherâ''anything you can receive over the air. Itâ''ll be a cheap add-on to consumer products for manufacturers and a nice feature for consumers. Itâ''ll cost broadcasters a bit to add the necessary equipment to their towers, but theyâ''ll benefit by gaining a bigger audience for local programming and advertisements.

No surprise these days, there are at least two competing technologies for a territory that only one can winâ''no broadcaster is going to put two different sets of equipment on its towers, no consumer is going to want to change devices or swap out cards when drives down the highway.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, both camps put up a flagâ''politely and briefly, but just long enough to make it clear that they are moving ahead with the technology, and will continue to do so, whether or not standardization efforts broker a compromise.

At the opening press conference of the Consumer Electronics Show, Woo Paik, president and CTO of LG Electronics brought out prototypes of what LG calls MPH devicesâ''that stands for Mobile Pedestrian Handheld. He said the company has run field trials in Chicago and Washington DC, is demonstrating in Las Vegas, and will be ready to ship products in February of 2009. Later, at the Samsung press conference, Samsungâ''s director of digital media J.W. Park brought out a parade of models (the human kind) carrying models (the prototype kind) of what Samsung calls Advanced-VSB devices. He reminded listeners that Samsung, demoâ''ing the technology at CES last year, was first out of the gate on this one. Both technologies modify the US digital broadcast system to receive a strong signal at normal auto speeds, not possible with the current digital broadcast technology.

Weâ''ll likely hear a lot more from both camps as the year goes on.