Hi-Def DVD Part III:  The War of the Discs

Posted by on 05/18 at 03:15 PM
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When we last saw our intrepid hero, DVD, in 2002 or so, it had risen in just five short years to become the undisputed king of all physical distribution formats.  VHS had gone the way of the Old Republic, and tapes were relegated to the closeout bin and garage sales.  Falling prices and rapidly-improving technology was fueling consumer demand for High Definition (“HD”) televisions, and consumer electronics manufacturers were racing to develop a new physical distribution format capable of storing the vast amount of data required by HD.  UCSB professor and Millennium Technology Prize Laureate Shuji Nakamura had made this possible with his invention of the blue LASER diode.

    Posted by John  on  05/18  at  10:39 AM

  1. What difference does all this make? Who can afford either one? I certainly cant. It’s costing me $130.00 to fill up my truck at the gas station. My discretionary spending is ancient history.

    2. Posted by Jack A. Perry  on  05/18  at  08:27 PM

  2. Why in the cases of VHS and bluray does second best seem to win more often? It must be that, as in politics, it is usually the one with the most money and NOT the best for the job that gets in.  Too bad.

    3. Posted by Lee Weinland  on  05/18  at  10:22 PM

  3. After virtually losing the Betacam vs.VHS war,
    Sony must have learned a few tricks.
    As a professional video producer, I am delighted to get this settled in record time compared to the now mute point of the VHS/ Beta cam war.

    It is still tough to choose what equipment to buy. Hereto fore, we in the production industry have been limited to sending our HD content on DV tapes. But the one thing I have always been able to count on is that Sony makes the most reliable professional video production products I have owned. Hopefully they can now spend time improving & developing the right stuff for us to produce the content on.
    In the meantime, maybe Microsoft can concentrate on making a better compression format for sending HD files over the internet.  Sure more band with will eventually help, it’d also be nice to send a file that didn’t take all night to transfer…

    4. Posted by Lee Weinland  on  05/18  at  10:54 PM

  4. Having previously worked on infrared laser projects for the government, I was somewhat surprised that the industry so quickly adopted Dr. Shuji Nakamura’s Blue ray solution. 

    Don’t get me wrong since I totally admire Dr. Nakmura’s achievement but it occured to me that we already had some very sophisticated technology for transmitting large data streams via infrared.  It might have been more economical and efficient to transfer and utilize what sophisticated govt. technology we already have and develop it to make HD recording viable sooner It might have alleviated some of the infighting between the factions (HD/DVD and Blure Ray).  But nobody was listening to the same vibes I was hearing here from a few of the scientists I was working with at our little lab in Los Alamos.  They were a little too busy trying to explain where the hard drives that weren’t really missing were…

    But on the other hand, a THIRD comer to the “ HD disc war” might have really muddied the works.  Anyway, maybe when we go through the next big transition to “Ultra HD we can explore infrared options.  Who knows what the fickle finger of the controllers of capitalism will dial and the market will demand???
    For now, I am glad it is relativley settled.

    5. Posted by Art Davis  on  05/19  at  08:27 AM

  5. Is the point of VHS v. Beta deaf and dumb as well, or merely mute?

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