I went to CES 2008 last month in part to get a sense of what was happening in the BluRay-vs-HD-DVD war. Of course, I wasn’t even in Vegas by the time Warner Brothers announced that they were joining the BluRay camp, leaving only two out of seven studios - Paramount and Universal - exclusively HD-DVD. Well, it might be time for those two to make other plans.
In an interesting example of syncronicity, two announcements this week have pretty much finished off HD-DVD. First, Netflix announced they would no longer offer HD-DVD discs in their rental inventory by the end of the year. As a go-to service for movie buffs, that one had to hurt Toshiba, HD-DVD’s parent. Then, another blow: retailer Best Buy declared they would recommend BluRay as their preferred format for hi-def discs. Everyone in the audience that has never bought anything at a Best Buy, please raise your hands. Hmm, pretty quiet out there.
Of course, the super-futurists among us will sniff that this is all just theater, that actually owing a physical copy of a media property is passe’ already. Downloads, they say, are the future, no matter the outcome of the hi-def disc war. I can’t really buy into that myself, at least not yet; downloads of hi-def material still take way too long, and there is still something about holding a disc in your hand that says “mine!” that a file stored in a server never will. (And let’s not forget how the vinyl people howled at the downsizing of album covers to CD cases - where do you put the cover art? Now that problem is becoming an absolute reality - no disc, no cover. No cover, no cover art.)
It looks like Sony has won this round. It must taste pretty sweet in the wake of VHS vs. Betamax a few decades ago. Now if they can get good, updated BluRay players into the market for less than $100, we might have a product here.
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How about some reasonably priced burners? That’s what I’m really looking forward to, that, and some reasonably priced blank media. Let’s get on with this already! I’m sick of being limited to 8.5 Gigs.
Posted by on 02/14 at 08:29 AM
Yup. I said as much back on January 11th.
http://techthoughts.org/2008/01/11/prediction-blu-ray-takes-the-hd-optical-media-crown/
As for cheap burners, LiteOn already has a 2x Blu-ray burner on special from time to time in the $300 range. While not yet “throwaway” prices, it is quite approachable, IMHO.
Anthony Burokas
IEBA Communications
Posted by Anthony on 02/16 at 04:19 PM
Little discussed in all of this has been Microsoft. The XBox supported HD DVD, and when Sony was slow to get PlayStation 3 (with BluRay) out the door, the early money was moving to the HD DVD side.
So much for the early money.
No surprise, Microsoft just announced no more HD DVD for XBox...but did not name a replacement.
Meanwhile, Apple has long been a BluRay supporter when you talk to them at trade shows and the such, it is yet to become a fixture (or even an option) in their computer and consumer product lineups.
It’s clear who won the game; the mop-up afterward is still going to take some time, however.
Posted by Chris Meyer on 02/25 at 08:58 AM
