IT TOOK TWO YEARS

for a clear winner to emerge in the high-definition format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD. But now the victor,

Sony's

Blu-ray's competitor, Toshiba, waved the white flag on Tuesday, announcing it would no longer make or sell HD DVD players and recorders. The move followed two months of swiftly eroding studio and retailer support for the technology. Warner Bros. Studios, Netflix, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart all reported that they would phase out HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

"It's been clear from the onset that no one wanted two rival formats, except the companies promoting those formats," says Jim Willcox, electronics editor for Consumer Reports. "It was a game of chicken, and Toshiba blinked first."

Ultimately, it's a relief for battle-scarred consumers who are eager to buy a high-definition player without worrying whether the format they choose will become obsolete. However, that doesn't mean you should jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon just yet. A new round of competition and price cuts, as well as the fact that the Blu-ray technology is still evolving means that, for now, it's better to hold off and wait for the technology to mature and prices to be slashed. "You've waited this long, you can wait a little longer," says Willcox.

Here are five reasons why you should wait to buy a Blu-ray:

1) More price competition

Hold off on buying Blu-ray for eight months, and you could save as much as 25%, says Brian Cooley, editor at large for electronics review site CNET. Blu-ray supporters such as Sony and Panasonic that once co-promoted the technology, are now competing against one another. That competition should inevitably lead to progressively lower prices on Blu-ray players, recorders and discs, he explains. Expect to see the bulk of price drops to occur just before the 2008 holiday shopping season, when several new players are set to hit the market. The Consumer Electronics Association expects the average price of a high-definition player to drop from a current $395 to $307 in 2008.

2) Emerging competitors

Blu-ray may have won the high-def DVD format war, but it still faces plenty of (less expensive) challengers.

"The format war took so long that the industry decided to move on," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, a market researcher. "Studios started looking for something else, because neither HD DVD nor Blu-ray was bringing in revenue."

With on-demand Internet download services like Netflix, Amazon.com and Apple gaining momentum, Blu-ray is a hard sell to consumers who are watching their wallets. A 40GB Apple TV box, which streams video from your computer to your television, will set you back $229, roughly 40% less than the least-expensive Blu-ray players. The cost benefit of these services doesn't stop there: A new release high-definition rental on the Apple TV system runs $4.99 for 24 hours, while buying a single new release on Blu-ray disc will set you back about $35.

"We've yet to see and see how the living room vs. PC battle will work out," says Cooley.

Evolving technology

Most of the technology in most stand-alone Blu-ray decks simply plays the discs, and has yet to truly evolve. Hold out until the end of the summer and you can get the latest technology, so-called Profile 2.0 or BD Live systems, says Melissa Perenson, senior products editor for PC World magazine. These players let you connect to the Internet for interactive games and the latest trailers, and use dual picture technology to simultaneously play the movie and bonus features like director commentary. Right now, the only system that is upgradeable to this new technology is the latest version of Sony's PS3 gaming system, which costs $399. Even if you're happy with a player that does nothing but, well,

, you won't see significant price drops until the latest technology shows up on shelves.

4) Trade-in incentives

If you're one of the more than 400,000 consumers who bought an HD DVD player, you may not be totally out of luck. It's likely that the same brand competition that's expected to fuel future price reductions could lead manufacturers and retailers to offer some incentive for trading in your old HD DVD system and discs, says Willcox. Sony tested one such program in Germany in late January, offering consumers at major electronics retailer Saturn what amounted to a 30% discount on its Sony BDP-S300 player when they turned in a used HD DVD player.

5) Momentum is slow

Even if you run out and buy a Blu-ray player today, you're still going to have a hard time finding all of those high-def movies you've been dying to watch. "The biggest battle manufacturers fought and will continue to fight is consumer apathy," says Perenson. There just aren't that many titles released in high-definition format. Best Buy, for example, currently sells just 505 Blu-ray titles and 421 HD DVD, compared with nearly 67,000 in standard DVD format. Wait to buy until there are enough titles to build a library, and you'll likely get improved technology at a better price, to boot.