Blu Ray, HD DVD, Format Wars, Sony Strikes Back

Posted by on 05/04 at 08:00 AM
image

As you may or may not remember, there was a battle going on in 2006 and 2007.  A battle fought largely on US soil.  A battle to win the hearts and minds of the US Consumer.  If you weren’t really paying attention, though, you might have missed it—this battle wasn’t featured nightly on the evening news.  While the economic and technological fight was real enough, the battle of HD-DVD v. Blu-ray to determine the physical content distribution format for high-definition video became, in many ways, the Format War that Wasn’t.

    Posted by Keith Robinson  on  05/04  at  11:58 AM

  1. What happened with the video tape debacle, and their insistance on solely using their own proprietary memory devices in their cameras is why I consider Sony products as a last resort, no matter what the Sony product might be. Blu-Ray is not for me…

    2. Posted by Phil  on  05/04  at  03:39 PM

  2. We’ve seen how VHS ‘quantity’ beat out Beta QUALITY - but some people can’t count: VHS 6 hour vs Beta 8 hour.  That was back “then” ... now it’s happened all over again ...

    Blu-ray vs HD-DVD today.  Sony got their Blu-ray in their PlayStation 3 while Microsoft put their idea into the xBox360 HD-DVD addon to their Game Console.

    Two different formats, both of which put our 65 plus TV’s where they belong: out to pasture.  And allowed the 1080p concept into the 21st century.

    Blu-ray only had a line command(s) to allow making backups or data disc(s) while HD-DVD has several PROGRAMS and Blu-ray vs HD-DVD “wins” 30GB vs 25GB size wise again ...

    Now we’ll have to wait for the ‘wiener’ to catchup with the HD-DVD market movie list which may take up to two years!!!  Sony can now take their time, charge us non-competition $$$ and has a clear view on the playing field.

    Sony can now join the the few companies and be a wiener like Gas companies, Microsoft and charge ...

    At least until they cay buy out LG ... GGC-H20L and GGW-H20L ...  then the sky will be to limit.

    Remember you voted, you won, and now don’t complain.

    3. Posted by John  on  05/04  at  03:52 PM

  3. What was your point?

    4. Posted by Chad Steele  on  05/04  at  04:11 PM

  4. Sony does not care for anything but profits and how much they can screw their customers.

    For anyone that forgot, Sony is the pack of criminals that decided to deliberately infect their audio cd’s with a un-removable rootkit virus to better control their unwitting customers/victims.

    Do not now or ever buy anything made by criminals.

    5. Posted by Ricky B  on  05/04  at  04:43 PM

  5. Great reading and I was there to remember the Beta and VHS wars. Keep up the good work and look forward to Part TWO.

    6. Posted by Gerald E. Oborn  on  05/04  at  09:12 PM

  6. I don’t follow the analogy--A search light needs a large single object and a flashlight can light many points.  Seems like it should be the other way.  To me a flashlight is a narrow beam and would hit a small spot whereas a searchlight6
    is very briht and would illuminate lots of points
    I believe I understand how it works--the small
    er the light beam, the smaller the pit/smooth spot can be. Thus more info imparted

    7. Posted by Chris Herzog  on  05/05  at  02:59 PM

  7. Gerald - it sounds like you followed the analogy perfectly, though I could have phrased it differently and written something like “if all you have is a searchlight, and you have to light ONLY *one* thing, completely, without lighting anything else, that one thing is going to have to be large.” If you have a flashlight, you can entirely (individually) light many more, small things, and they can be much closer together.  In any case, your summary of the analogy is spot on:  the narrower the LASER beam (wavelength), the more data you can cram onto a disc because you can now read that much more data without error.

    8. Posted by Chris Herzog  on  05/05  at  03:10 PM

  8. P.S.:  By way of additional clarification… it’s not the brightness of the LASER that’s the issue - it’s the physical size of the beam itself, measured in nanometers (nm), or billionths of a meter.

    9. Page 1 of 1 pages

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: Hi-Def DVD Part II: Blue LASER Boogaloo

Previous entry: What is this thing called Jing?

<< Back to main