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The Format War is Over, Blu-ray Wins, Let’s All Head Home
By Jay Alan | February 19, 2008
I have been a supporter of HD-DVD for quite a while. I felt it offered the consumer more for their money, but now we need to stop beating a dead horse and call it a day. It all started with WB going Blu-ray exclusive a little over a month ago, that was bad news for HD-DVD, but not anything they couldn’t recover from with the right moves. Problem is, Toshiba didn’t make the right moves, and now with Netflix and Best Buy both announcing their Blu-ray, “preference”, the war may not be actually over, but in the hearts and minds of the people it’s inevitable and that’s good enough. So Toshiba has made the only move let to them and declared their own format dead.
Now that all the studios are Blu-ray exclusive, will Blu-ray become the next generation of DVD, or will it just become a new laser disc? After the way things have gone, I have no idea, but I can see two possible outcomes. The simple one is now that the war is over people buy Blu-ray as the next thing, and it becomes just that. The other possibility is that Blu-ray and DVD both remain popular, splitting the market between normal viewers and the audiophiles who are willing to pay extra. Keep in mind that most people claim they don’t see any visual differance between DVD and Blu-ray (I know, they’re crazy), so those people won’t have any motivation to spend $300 on a Blu-ray player when a $100 DVD player will suffice, those Blu-ray players are unlikely to come down very fast now, with the demise of HD-DVD (like it or not, the format war created price wars that lowered player prices much faster than when DVD hit the market). I just don’t see Digital Downloads killing Blu-ray, at least not anytime soon. The best downloads right now are on the new Apple TV, and the video quality just isn’t as good as Blu-ray and they still take too long to download. Perhaps in a few years internet speeds will increase enough for better quality fast downloads, until that time downloads are going to be a convenience thing, not a major player, once that finally happens Blu-ray should be embedded as a legacy format.
So where do I sit on all this? My nose, like Toshiba’s, has already been bloodied by this battle, so I’ll be watching good old DVD’s until Blu-ray can prove to me it’s more than just the next Laser Disc (and they can get a decent player out). Let’s hope it’s soon, because we all need to move on, and I need my HD movies from Netflix please.
Image Via: DBTechno
Topics: Movies, Sounds of Silence, Technology |
Tags: apple tv | blu-ray | hd-dvd | netflix | sony | toshiba | wb.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:22 am
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