Feb 18 2008
Red Flag of Surrender, Blu Prevails
Today, the ‘red’ flag of surrender was raised by Toshiba, the maker of the HD-DVD format DVDs and disc players. They have announced they will not produce any more products with the HD-DVD technology.
It’s final. Blu is better than Red.
For those who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 2 years, HD-DVD was one of the two competing next-generation DVD formats who were competing for the High Definition DVD market. It was an all-out VHS vs. BetaMax rehash.
Sadly, last time evil prevailed and VHS became the standard. However, this time methinks the powers that be have made the correct choice, and Blu-ray was the right way to go.
The only thing that makes this victory even more sweet is that Microsoft backed the HD-DVD format, and once again has picked a loser. Now what are all the poor souls who bought Xbox 360’s going to do?
What does this mean for the average bear? If you’re planning to buy a new dvd player in the next year or so, you will have two options - future proof and pay a little more for a Blu-ray, or get a very cheap standard DVD player.
I say ‘future proof’ because unless you have one of the most recent HDTVs (one that does 1080p), you will not reap the full benefit of the Blu-ray disc. In some cases, you might as well be watching a standard DVD. Don’t let silly people who speak of ‘upconverting’ make you think it’s the magic bullet either. You won’t see much difference in DVD vs Blu-Ray until you have a top of the line HD set.
Do you need to upgrade all your DVD library? No. Blu-ray players will play standard DVDs. But Blu-ray discs cannot be played on standard DVD players.
Personally, I will wait until a high quality player is under $150 before I upgrade. Right now the low end players are still well over $200.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Josh and his brother have been HDDvd and BluRay battling for the past year. Josh has been so pumped that he won the war.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:39 am
My only sadness with Blu-Ray winning (and this despite the fact that I work for the Xbox 360 team) is the fact that it’s a Sony format. If you want to talk evil, I think Sony’s a pretty high contender in that court. (Root kits, proprietary media formats, severe overpricing…some major misfires.) Luckily, I never bought an HD-DVD drive for my Xbox 360, and as it doesn’t come included, it wasn’t a big loss to me. I also hadn’t started buying any High-Def media until the format war was over. When Toshiba conceded defeat on Friday, I went right out and bought myself a PlayStation 3. I have a 42″ High-Def television, and the quality difference is stunning. My first Blu-Ray purchase was the BBC series, Planet Earth. Ho. Ly. Cow.
I do have a complaint about how much more expensive Blu-Ray discs are. What that will end up meaning to me is that I’ll rent more movies and buy far fewer…only the ones I really love. I don’t think it very likely that my Blu-Ray collection will ever rival my DVD collection of 300+ movies.
Now if we can just get affordable Blu-Ray burners to come along here pretty soon, I need a high-volume removable storage option for backing up media files!
February 18th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Oh yes. Sony is the new Microsoft when it comes to greedy Monopolistic endeavors. I’ve had some good and some bad experiences with their products.