Danny Ranck doesn’t make rash decisions.

The junior in electrical engineering paid close attention as the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD raged in 2007. He was trying to decide whether he should shell out $400 for the Sony PlayStation 3, which comes equipped with a Blu-ray player.

In January, when major movie studio Warner Bros. made the decision to release their films only in Blu-Ray, Ranck made the plunge.

“I held off on getting a PS3 until I saw HD DVD was dying out,” Ranck said, pointing out that the Blu-ray player in Sony’s next-generation console was a big factor in his purchase.

Ranck’s gamble was a good one.

Just last week, Toshiba, the major producer of HD DVD players, announced it would be discontinuing the technology, allowing Blu-ray to claim victory.

Although he said he was comforted by Toshiba’s announcement, the more than 1 million people in North America who purchased HD DVD players don’t share his sentiment. But it doesn’t appear Blu-ray is quite out of the woods yet.

According to Robert Schrag, professor of communication, Blu-ray will still face tough competition in the upcoming years from Internet video distribution. He said this will become an even greater issue with the proliferation of smartphones — like the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch — and pocket PCs.

He said he believes he’ll eventually get to the point where he doesn’t “even touch a DVD anymore.”

But that prospect doesn’t concern Ranck much.

“I could see HD downloads beating out Blu-ray even,” Ranck said. “It doesn’t worry me. At least downloading’s not a format — anyone can do it.”

And Greg Raschke, associate director for collections and scholarly communications for the libraries, said that day might not be that far away.

The libraries have begun acquiring the rights to provide streaming video direct from their archives. Raschke said these videos are available to the anyone, anywhere — as long as he or she has the ability to log in to the University system.

Already, the libraries’ media collection contains 385 streaming videos, and Raschke said that makes the University and others like it an ideal battleground for the next format war — the one between Blu-ray and all-digital media.

“This is the first area where digital is going to take hold,” Raschke said.

But Raschke said the fact that the library is ahead of the Blu-ray curve doesn’t mean they won’t be looking to purchase some videos in Blu-ray format.

“We have to be committed to keeping up with the technology,” he said. “The biggest thing is making sure we have what people need.”

He said he didn’t have specific time tables for upcoming purchases of Blu-ray players or discs, but said now that Toshiba has backed down, the library will be looking to purchase some “ASAP.”

Raschke said the costs can be very different for digital and physical media, mostly because managing the collection has different needs. Digital media require less storage space, but more technological infrastructure. Maintaining the collection itself can also mean the difference between a student working a circulation desk and a more experienced staff member with technical expertise.

“Digital tends to be more expensive as far as the upfront,” Raschke said. “But we’ve seen much higher use.”

That higher use is reflected by services in mainstream media as well. Although it offered only an add-on HD DVD player, Microsoft’s Xbox Live service offers downloadable HD movies. The popular mail-order rental service Netflix also offers streaming video.

Schrag said shows that the format wars are far from over.

“The format wars aren’t going away. They’ll just get more subtle,” Schrag said. “The concept of proprietary streams of content will stay with us.”

But as Schrag pointed out, the persisting format wars may not be all bad for the consumer, mostly because in the end, it is the consumer’s voice that can have an impact on the quality of the product.

“The relationship between culture and technology is always a negotiation,” Schrag said. “They cannot force us to buy. They can limit my options, but I’m still the consumer and I have a lot of choices on how to spend my entertainment dollar. They had better give me what I want.”

And satisfying the consumer, or in the library’s case, students, is an important philosophy for the NCSU libraries as well, Raschke said. That’s why he said the library is even ordering e-book readers — like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader — to allow students to test the viability of the technology.

“Some libraries are afraid of technology,” Raschke said. “This library’s philosophy is to embrace it.”

That philosophy can be difficult to manage, Raschke said, especially with technology changing so rapidly.

“We went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray in not that long a time,” Raschke said. “Some of this is so new that we don’t know how it’s going to play out.”

Even when the libraries purchase Blu-ray discs, don’t expect them to retire their old DVD collections. While Raschke said the collection doesn’t contain any Betamax tapes, it does have 7,504 VHS tapes and 305 laserdiscs. If that’s any indication of the DVD’s staying power, they could last for quite a while.

“The DVDs are now part of the collection,” Raschke said. “They’re just like books — we’re going to retain them as long as we can.”

Raschke said the libraries are busier than they’ve ever been. Part of the mandate of the job is keeping up with emerging technology. The trick, he said, is to make management decisions “so you miss the fads and hit the stuff that sticks.”

“It’s exciting,” Raschke said. “Its more fun to be a librarian in a digital age.”