This is still unfolding at this point, but it's a potential development that warms the cockles of my heart: Toshiba is apparently getting ready to face reality and give up on HD DVD, leaving Blu-Ray as the victor in the race to replace DVD with a high-definition format.
I'm not saying that because I have anything against Toshiba or HD DVD. Actually, the format has its advantages in terms of both features and economics. And truth to tell, I'm not itching to buy a high-def player of any sort just yet. (A lot of the sort of exotic things I like are available only on DVD.) In short, I'd have been equally content if HD DVD had been a hit and it was Sony and other backers of Blu-Ray who were crying uncle.
But in recent weeks, the news has been all good for Blu-Ray and all terrible for HD DVD, with entertainment giants such as Warner Bros., Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Netflix all siding with Sony. You'd have to be a believer in miracles to think HD DVD could pull out a win.
And you'd have to be a masochist not to look forward to the end, at long last, of the format wars. The refusal of the various companies involved in the two camps to find common ground and agree on a single format has been a huge poke in the eye to consumers, who reasonably want to avoid investing hundreds of dollars in a device that destined to be a doorstop. And surely it's been a lousy strategy for the consumer electronics and entertainment industries, since so many smart consumers have chosen to bide their time. (If HD DVD dies, the format wars will definitely have turned out to be a mistake for Toshiba, which will have poured hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain.)
So while I'll be happy if does turn out the format wars are ending, I'm mostly irritated at everybody who chose to take either side in the m. Thanks a bunch, guys--you engineered a colossal waste of everyone's time, when you had the opportunity to agree on a single format in the first place and give consumers an easy decision rather than a headache that lasted for years.
Time for a silly little poll:
Sadly Bluray is an incomplete format that still requires several more years of development to get it to work correctly. Not much cause for celebration there ...
If only Toshiba would reach into their pockets and buy back some support. Blu-ray is an incomplete platform, with each update obsoleting its predecessor. For instance, players with grace period profile 1.0 and Bonus View 1.1. Profile 2.0 players are going out later this year, and it requires new hardware for the upgrade. Wiki it. HD DVD was tech-complete, with the updates involving software only. Also, region encoding is unavailable on HD DVD. Blu-ray is hostile and should should go the way of BetaMax. Sony should know a lot about how to lose a format war.
I have HD DVD and it is great. I will continue to rent from Netflix until the HD DVD run dry. I will buy Bewulf later this mounth. Now we will see if Blu-Ray sets the world on fire with the $400 beta players. Two of my friends just saw HD DVD yesterday and they were amazed. I told them the whole sad story about the format war. They asked "What's Blu-Ray?". It's a "Hi-Def DVD" format I told them. Two out of three people still don't know anything about Blu-Ray. I may buy Blu-Ray 2.0 in two years when the price is right and these early beta players fade away if Blu-Ray can actually replace DVD. Or maybe I will just stick with HD On Demand instead and skip disks entirely.
Once upon a time there was a single HD format (See DVD Forum). It's high definition format, HD-DVD, got rid of some silliness that had plagued DVD, such as Region codings, and rationalized the DRM nonsense a bit. Sony decided that they *really* wanted their Region codings and DRM, so they decided to build their own format, BluRay, whose major advantage was increased capacity and a cooler name. They used the leverage of their, and other like-minded studios to cut off the air supply (eg content) from HD-DVD, bundled their disk with a game machine and eventually managed to kill off the Standard format and impose a half-completed, DRM heavy disk that again has stupid region codes.
Sony *HATES* the consumer.
"Region codes" are meaningless in any real sense. I've copied every single one of my DVDs and all the software for that task removes region coding. You can purchase hardware which ignores region codes also as well at about the same price as "normal" hardware. Why would anyone expect this to be any different with future formats? Regardless of the imagined advantages/disadvantages of one format over another, everything you can now do with DVD will still be the case with Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD had it prevailed). There will be no significant differences in usage in spite of all the hype and FUD emanating from both sides.
I for one am glad to see Toshiba lose this battle. In my experience they have the worst technical support of any major computer/electronics manufacturer. Putting aside the objections of geeky purists, I'd say the consumer is the winner here.
Vista's still too expensive AND a waste of time and money. Happy with XP. In this case, "If it ain't broke why fix it."