I was avoiding a post about this but someone notified me about a news article a few days ago over at foxnews. Now while foxnews is definitly NOT my favorite place to find tech news they had some very interesting writeups compairing hddvd and blurary (everyone on this site knows which way i lean, hddvd). First of all they make a heavy point that with HDDVD easily able to produce HDDVD/DVD flip discs on the same machinery and bluray not able to do the same that definitly is a winning combo, the fact is compatability normally wins, and with Sony known for Media failures (UMD, SACD, etc) this isn’t going to end well.
They also analyse the fact that Dell and some other big names have backed bluray and are producing Bluray equiped computers and devices, but then they mention most of these places also deployed the venerable “Zip Discs” and we all know how that ended up. In the end it comes down to them saying no real decision can be made for atleast 3-4 years because until then its all just going to be a guessing game, and with the new upscaling dvd players basically making all your dvd’s about the same quality as HDDVD and Bluray who needs either to watch great movies? Ya sure if my disc is a flipdisk that has a hddvd then ill watch it but why else? Well the following from Ulanoff pretty much sums up my feelings.
“Warner is smart enough to know that it can sneak HD DVD content into the hands of consumers by burning it onto the back of regular DVD discs. Dvorak noted in his column that Blu-ray technology can’t achieve this same feat (not without jumping through some significant technical hurdles).
The PS3 will be a blockbuster. Early supplies will sell out. And these gamers will, by default, get a brand new Blu-ray drive. Gamers already expect a lot from their consoles, so the “extra interaction” Blu-ray offers may not mean much to them. But the PS3′s success will not help Blu-ray win in the marketplace. This is because Sony’s aiming at the wrong target audience.
HD DVD and Blu-ray will achieve success only if they reach critical mass in the general consumer marketplace. The gaming market is not the general market. The vast majority of consumers who watch DVDs and even own HD sets are not 12- to 25-year-old die-hard gamers. Instead, they’re 25- to 55-year-old adults with children who have better things to do than play games.”, Ulanoff
Source: FoxNews(Dvorak), FoxNews(Failure of Bluray eminent)
