Whether you are celebrating holidays, holy days, or just taking some time off, best wishes to all of you for a wonderful new year!

2009 was a year where HD DVD lived on in some way for many of us via sales of old disc inventory, as well as promise of one last new title. Though the format is defunct in the western world, a sibling format, CB-HD has been making strong gains over in China, signing on more and more studios, like Warner and Paramount.

The Blu-ray format made its inevitable progress this year. The recent Black Friday saw sub-$100 players, one made by none other than Toshiba. Coming up at CES, they will show or announce players that support a 3D standard for the format to keep up with the numbers of 3D movies that have been coming out, such as James Cameron’s Avatar.

Though we loved our tangible physical media, most of us probably realized that HD DVD and Blu-ray were probably the last of the optical disc formats. But, did you expect such a huge proliferation in all the ways that we can now have HD content?

Netbooks were incredibly popular in 2009, and most of them included HD-capable video abilities in their $299 price point. In fact, almost all laptops sold today include basic HD features, as do most of the new smartphones and personal media devices. This spread of HD ability has kept pace with corresponding developments in the world of online video streaming, which is poised to make strong gains in 2010.

We no longer have to hook up a specially made PC to our HDTVs to enjoy video streaming, because more HDTVs are coming out with internet features built right in (as are Blu-ray players, finally!). This ranges from watching YouTube and Hulu, all the way to streaming DVDs from Netflix and Blockbuster.

What are your HD gadget plans for 2010? Did Santa leave any HD goodies for you under the tree? Have you eyed these thinner LCDs with LED backlighting? Or are you taking a break from the video side and focusing on building up the audio part of your home theater experience?