Unfortunately for me, it seems as though Sony Blu-ray is the winner.
HD DVD and Blu-ray have been battling it out for over a year now, and most people are speculating that Blu-ray will emerge as the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over by the end of 2008 Toshiba makes the HD DVD format and has been forced to cut prices almost in half to stay competitive. Some people say that Toshiba is only delaying the inevitable.
Toshiba’s price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced that it would shift from producing in both formats to using only Blu-ray, expanding the disc format’s advantage in the number of movies and other content it already owns. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two big-name studios — Paramount and Universal.
So what happens if Sony wins the war (in addition to my inevitable disappointment because my girlfriend bought me a $200 HD DVD player that will look really nice, but will eventually be useless for high def content)? Things will become interesting if Microsoft is forced to begin using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games.
That’s definitely not an outcome the computer mega-company would be happy to see.
Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360. The addition of high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
There was a trade show in Japan featuring a booth with Sony and Blu-ray, and another booth with Microsoft and HD DVD. According to Sony, more than 100 games have been developed using Blu-ray technology and Microsoft fails to comment on how may games have been produced using the HD DVD format.
For now, if you’re looking into buying a next-gen DVD player, I would highly suggest purchasing an upconversion player. These players get you near high definition quality and will work with any 1080i or 1080p television you have.
Jonathan Masker is a wireless solution expert and a self-proclaimed gadget guru. Reach him at jonathan.masker@gmail.com.