Just in case you think I’ve been shirking my duties as a DVD enthusiast while I’m away in Palm Springs, here’s some interesting news from CES: Warner Home Video announced that it’ll be shipping its dual-format high-definition DVDs in the second half of this year.

Not a dual-format player, mind you, but a dual-format disc — one that contains both Blu-ray and HD-DVD versions of a given movie. They’re calling it THD, for “Total High Def”, and it’s an elegant compromise in the format war, since anyone who’s already picked a side no longer has to worry about his format of choice going extinct … but it’s no dual-format player.

Fortunately, this is. Kinda clunky-looking, though, and pretty obviously constructed around this DVD-ROM drive. It’s also a little pricey at $1200 USD; I’m thinking we might want to wait for the inevitable Chinese unit, which will surely arrive within a few months and compensate for its inelegance with a far smaller price tag.

One more Engadget story: Blu-ray has called “Mission Accomplished” on the whole format war. I think that might be a little premature, but it does seem to me that HD-DVD is lagging pretty far behind in studio support these days.