2008 Woodie Awards
Wait out the HD v. Blue-ray format battle
Nathan Harrison, Staff Writer
Issue date: 11/21/06
Last Updated: 12/26/07
Just when everyone is finally getting settled in with the DVD format, the powers-that-be decide it's time to confuse the public with what's likely to be another long, drawn-out format war. Plenty of people will be capitalizing on post-Thanksgiving sales and buying their first-ever DVD player this Friday; I can't imagine what they'd make of this.
The battle this time around divides consumers between two camps: the Blu-ray camp, headed up by Sony and supported by Apple, Disney, Fox and a host of other allied companies, and the HD-DVD camp, backed by Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel, Universal Studios and others.
The split already has plenty of film buffs and tech-enthusiasts groaning, with the battle between VHS and Betamax still lingering in the public consciousness. Many companies, such as Paramount and Warner Bros., are supporting both formats, but some (like Universal) have pledged exclusive support of one side or the other, leaving the rest of us caught in the middle.
The technology for each format is nearly identical: Sony's Blu-ray employs a blue laser with a narrower beam to more tightly read and record information from a DVD-size disc, just as HD-DVD does. Blu-ray primarily differs from HD-DVD by offering greater durability and storage capacity (50GB vs. 30GB), but the technology used to do this make the manufacture of both the discs and disc-readers more expensive than those for HD-DVD.
Those who remember Betamax at all will recognize that once again Sony is in the position of offering an expensive, higher-quality product against a cheaper, lower-quality competing format. Already speculation is rampant that Sony will follow in its own footsteps and eventually find itself on the losing side; Sony has a long history of creating proprietary media formats that never reach widespread use and eventually fade into obscurity. Apart from Betamax, examples include MiniDisc, MemoryStick, ATRAC and most recently of all, the Universal Media Disc that the PlayStation Portable relied on.
The battle this time around divides consumers between two camps: the Blu-ray camp, headed up by Sony and supported by Apple, Disney, Fox and a host of other allied companies, and the HD-DVD camp, backed by Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel, Universal Studios and others.
The split already has plenty of film buffs and tech-enthusiasts groaning, with the battle between VHS and Betamax still lingering in the public consciousness. Many companies, such as Paramount and Warner Bros., are supporting both formats, but some (like Universal) have pledged exclusive support of one side or the other, leaving the rest of us caught in the middle.
The technology for each format is nearly identical: Sony's Blu-ray employs a blue laser with a narrower beam to more tightly read and record information from a DVD-size disc, just as HD-DVD does. Blu-ray primarily differs from HD-DVD by offering greater durability and storage capacity (50GB vs. 30GB), but the technology used to do this make the manufacture of both the discs and disc-readers more expensive than those for HD-DVD.
Those who remember Betamax at all will recognize that once again Sony is in the position of offering an expensive, higher-quality product against a cheaper, lower-quality competing format. Already speculation is rampant that Sony will follow in its own footsteps and eventually find itself on the losing side; Sony has a long history of creating proprietary media formats that never reach widespread use and eventually fade into obscurity. Apart from Betamax, examples include MiniDisc, MemoryStick, ATRAC and most recently of all, the Universal Media Disc that the PlayStation Portable relied on.
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