Warner Home Video held their latest “press appreciation event” at the Royal Ontario Museum last night, launching BBC Video’s “Planet Earth” and introducing us to its second-quarter lineup.

There’s some good stuff in there — I’m shamefully excited about that first-season set of “The Powerpuff Girls” — but “Planet Earth”, which was screening in HD-DVD on a pair of Toshiba Regza sets throughout the event — was definitely the highlight of the evening.

“Planet Earth” will be the first BBC Video title to be released in high-definition, and it’ll be available simultaneously in HD-DVD and Blu-ray editions; label reps were mum on subsequent releases, except to say that there will be more high-def content down the line.

“Doctor Who” and “Life on Mars” seem like obvious choices, given their respective geek factors; it struck me as odd that BBC Video has no plans to release “Life on Mars” on DVD in North America, since the show just wrapped up in the UK, but if they’re waiting to tie the release to high-def formats, that might explain it.

And still, we come back to the endless loop of the format question: Which player to buy? I spent some time over the weekend mulling high-def players — tempted by the $399 sticker price of Toshiba’s HD-A2 on Broadway, gawking at Samsung’s brand-new BD-P1200 at Best Buy, fondling LG’s BH100 combo player at Circuit City — but couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

Basically, I’m waiting for a second-generation combo player — one that has more comprehensive video and audio output options, and maybe a nicer cabinet. (It bugs me that you can’t turn off the glowing LG logo on the front of the thing.)

And then there’s this, which is still entirely hypothetical at this point, but sounds awfully nice. I mean, I do think Blu-ray will eventually win this war — it’s got the studio support, and it’s starting to show the sales numbers — but as long as “Shaun of the Dead” is an HD-DVD exclusive, I’ll need something that can play it.

So it’s going to be like this, is it?Sony touts its Blu-ray sales numbers on “Casino Royale”, and Toshiba pops out an “oh, yeah?” press release listing 70-odd new HD-DVD titles coming in the next three months from various studio partners — including such Universal gotta-haves as “Streets of Fire”, “The Bourne Identity” and my beloved “Shaun of the Dead”.

With Toshiba slashing prices on its current players, and a budget-priced Chinese machine hovering not too far in the future, does this mean HD-DVD is rallying for a final stand? Is that even possible?

As the comments on the relevant Engadget post demonstrate, we’re way past respectable debate here, but I honestly have no idea how this will play to the partisans. Too little, too late? Or “plenty”, but still too late? There are a lot of Blu-ray players out there now, even if they do look like gaming machines.

And: Yes, I must own “Streets of Fire”. Let me have my bliss.

Let’s start with “Seven”, which is the number of reviews that are, due to various complications yesterday, still to be written.

And then let’s consider “Ten”, which is roughly the number of hours I have to finish them. Thus, this morning’s very short post.

But here’s another: “Fifty thousand”, which is the number of Blu-ray discs of “Casino Royale” sold in the title’s first two weeks of availability, requiring another fifty thousand to be shipped to stores.

As Engadget HD points out, it took eleven months after the launch of the standard DVD for its first title to ship 100,000 units (“Air Force One”, in January 1998); Blu-ray has crossed that rubicon in only nine.

I don’t have any numbers for top-selling HD-DVD titles, but I suspect that the impending “Matrix Trilogy” sets will tell us how many people remain committed to the format as of May 22nd.

Breaking news, sort of: “The Matrix” is finally coming to high-def DVD … and through a scheduling quirk, it’s format-exclusive.

As reported on The Digital Bits and Engadget HD, Warner Home Video has announced that it’ll be releasing the “Matrix” trilogy to HD-DVD on May 22nd, with a Blu-ray release to follow later in the year.

Will this provide the edge HD-DVD has been looking for? The “Matrix” films would be a stunning high-def experience … although it seems that Warner releasing them exclusively as a boxed set would work against them in any format, as I’m one of the few people who’d happily sit through the sequels again.

Paramount surely ran afoul of the same problem with their “Misson: Impossible” trilogy box last fall — seriously, who needs “MI2”? — which is why the first two films in that series are being released separately … on May 22nd.

Whoa.

Yep, there it is: Engadget reports Toshiba will be lowering the list price of its HD-DVD players as of April 1st, with the base model, the HD-A2, now sporting a suggested $399 sticker price.

This news arrives just a couple of weeks after Sony’s announcement of its $600 Blu-ray player, and exactly one week after Sony’s exclusive Blu-ray edition of “Casino Royale” became the first high-definition title to make it onto Amazon.com’s top 25 DVD sales list. (It was selling at #17, right behind the standard DVD edition at #16.)

The comments sections of various blogs are arguing over whether the price drop is a sign of desperation, with Toshiba making a last-ditch attempt to grab the cheapest end of the market, or a calculated strategy to paint Blu-ray players as needlessly expensive and exorbitant by comparison. (Even the 20GB version of Sony’s PlayStation 3 is still going for $500.)

But will it make any difference? With only a handful of A-titles being released on HD-DVD in the coming weeks — and Universal’s “Children of Men” and “The Good Shepherd” being the only ones you won’t be able to buy on Blu-ray as well — it’s looking more and more like the format war might be in its final throes.

Of course, we all know how much “final throes” predictions are worth these days. And as long as “Children of Men” is only available on HD-DVD, I’m gonna need something to on which play it …

My latest DVD column is up at Sympatico/MSN, featuring a certain Italian boxer fellow. I’ve written at length about the nostalgic and dramatic merits of “Rocky Balboa”, but if you missed it in its theatrical run — and judging from the box-office tallies, a lot of you did — it’s certainly worth a look on disc.

(Sadly, the alternate ending included in the special features is not the one I’d hoped for, with Mason “The Line” Dixon punching Rocky’s brains out through his ear for a spectacular gladiator’s-death finale.)

Consumer warning: If you’re considering the Blu-ray edition, step back for a second and think about whether you really need to see Stallone’s bulging old-man neck veins in high-definition. Me, not so much.

The arrival of “Casino Royale” on Blu-ray disc today has the potential to finish the high-definition format war once and for all.

This is the first huge hit with a massive, cross- generational following to be released on either platform; not that people in their fifties and sixties necessarily have any interest in buying a high-def DVD player, but if it’s James Bond playing, they’ll stop and watch in the Sony store, whereas the “X-Men: The Last Stand” disc just gets some weird stares and a muttered comment about Ian McKellen wearing a bucket on his head.

More to the point, “Casino Royale” is a knockout. Gorgeous transfer, pumpin’ sound, terrific movie. Expect to see a lot of people walking out of Costco this weekend with PlayStation 3s under their arms. (The basic model is going for just $549 — a bargain, really.)

Oh, and speaking of DVD: My latest Sympatico/MSN column is up, but the index page hasn’t been updated — so for the moment, if you want to read it, you have to go here. Sorry for the inconvenience.