Toshiba has officially thrown in the towel and HD DVD is, for all practical purposes, no more. For consumers, it looks great that the war is over, but here's five consequences of a Blu-ray victory that you might not have considered. 1. Region coding is still alive While HD DVD had no regional restrictions, Blu-ray maintained the studio-friendly approach of coding titles so that they would only play in particular regions (albeit with a three-region approach rather than DVD's four, placing Australia alongside Europe rather than South America). In practice, the vast majority of titles were released in region-free versions that would play anywhere, but that might very well change if HD DVD finally gets the flick. Region coding is a nuisance for buyers, and neither format could risk putting people off during a battle for market share. But if there's only one option -- and hence no chance of defecting to a rival -- what's the bet that it starts appearing more frequently? 2. J...