HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray. Sony vs. Microsoft. One was cheaper to produce, while the other one had a greater install base. Only one could win and thankfully, the so-called “format war” ended relatively quickly.
So, who won? If you don’t already know, you’ll be in for the shock of your life if you hit that jump.
For the first time in the company’s history, Sony was able to win a format war. Betamax flopped, Mini Disc’s failed to take off and UMD’s are now being phased out in favor of digital distribution. Not Blu-Ray. Nope. Sony muscled their way into homes with the PS3 and the promise of 50 Gb of storage. What companies were supposed to do with that storage is anybody’s guess, but as Sony often said, they’ve “future-proofed” their format, so it could expand and grow into something that can be used for years.
Or until we all start downloading movies online… Wait? Aren’t we doing that already?
Oops.
For Blu-Ray winning the format war, Sony lands safetly within the top twenty Top Gaming Moments of 2008 at number 19.
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What will companies do with 50GB of storage? Are you serious?
They’ll increase the resolution. Duh!
Movie studios backed blu-ray because HD-DVD was bound to fail where DVD failed. The inability to accomidate the INEVITABLE hardware upgrade in 3 years. You think 1080p TVs will never again be upgraded? What planet are you living on Lono?
Blu-Ray will be around a long long time. 1080p, 1440p, 2100p. Blu-Ray can handle it.
Digital Distribution will NEVER hit the mass market. People in the developed world seem to be living in a bubble, ignorant to the fact that the MASS market doesnt have internet at all, let alone the most up-to-date high speed. Those of us with the most up-to-date high speed have to deal with little things called DATA CAPS, something which will only become more pervasive, not less so.
IT IS I the one that holds the title as FIRST POST OF 2008 and now i am back for FIRST POST OF 2009 by server time.
@Keith K: What’s more likely? That the “mass market” has blu-ray players
OR
That the “mass market” is connected to the internet?
Come on dude…
Sony vs Microsoft? While Microsoft had an HD-DVD player, HD-DVD itself was Toshiba’s creation. Microsoft really had nothing to do with it.
@Keith K: You’re kidding right? Blu-Ray “victory” was pyrric. It won a format war that NO ONE CARED ABOUT. Here we are, a year later, and DVD still outsells Blu-Ray. It hasn’t caught on yet and chances are, it wont.
You can’t even compare it to VHS vs DVD. DVD offered tons of advantages over VHS. What advantages does Blu-Ray have over DVD? The only advantage I can think of is, as you said, higher resolution. And not a lot of people will pay $10 or so extra for that. Not to mention however much blu-ray players cost.
I wouldn’t say that DVD “failed” by any stretch of the imagination.
Also, digital distribution has ALREADY caught on. Look at Netflix for the 360, or Sony’s subsequent offering. Hell, look at iTunes and all the stuff available on it. It’s quick, easy, and cheap.
C’mon Kira, I’m trying to keep it relevant to video games… And besides, most gamers did view it as MS v. Sony….
1080p will be replaced with 4k in the future, and then a new format is required, or is it?
Blu-Ray increases to grow (in GBs), they have successfully made a 500gb disc, and they say they soon is going to make a 1TB disc, still Blu-Ray, and those discs are still playable in today’s blu-ray players.
I don’t want to move over to digital distribution yet, PSP games and such I am OK with downloading. But downloading 50gb PS3 games? No way. Not everybody have a high bandwidth internet, it would take AGES to download something, when you can just go to the local store, buy it, watch it. I also like to watch my dvd collection grow, I like to have the dvds and games in a cover, not stored on a harddrive, but that may be just me.
Imagine, in the future, downloading 4k movies, and 500gb discs. I don’t want that. Maybe great for you people with a huge bandwidth, but for the people living on the countryside, or in small countries (Norway here), the bandwidth is not going to grow that huge, and you have to pay for the damn thing each month, and I don’t need that. I think it’s more likely to buy that Blu-Ray player 1 time, and enjoy it for many years, instead of paying for a huge bandwidth for each month for many years. “I would like to watch a new movie! Oh noes, the internet is down…”
I guess the real question is: Do we need a 500 GB version of the Dark Knight?
People asked the same thing when crossing over from VHS to DVD
And you can never have enough of Dark Knight!
But even now, I don’t want to download 50gb just to watch a movie it would take 5 minutes for me to buy.
If games sometime takes 200gb, do you want to download it, or buy it and play it instantly?
With 500gb discs, they can fit a bunch of movies on that one disc. Imagine every season of a show on one disc, or all the batman movies made, or all the GTA games on one disc? there is many ways to use the amount of storage, maybe you don’t need it all every time, but at least you have the choice.
But the main thing is, Blu-Ray have a better chance of hitting the mass market rather than digital distribution. Blu-Ray is a one time investment, and a good bandwidth is monthly subscription, and it’s often very expensive, and not everybody have that option if they live outside the big city.
Strandi: The internet has ALREADY hit the mass market, so has digital distribution, while Blu-Ray is lagging behind.
Broadband is everywhere, while Blu Ray is not.
I’ve been kinda torn on Blu-Ray winning the format war. On one hand, Blu-Ray is technologically superior to HD DVD in every way imaginable, but on the other, HD DVD had one advantage over Blu-Ray: Regionless freedom.
Now that Blu-Ray is victorious, we have no choice but to succumb to the region encoding that has plagued us for years, now with 50% more proprietary Sony flavor!
Lono: Yes, but does everyone have high speed broadband? Enough speed to download a high def video at a reasonable time? I only have a 1mbit broadband, and downloading 50gb takes a loooong time, especially since downloads don’t use the whole capacity. That is not good enough for me, and on top of that, it requires HDD space, and if I accidentally delete the thing, I have to download it again. When I want to watch a movie, I want to watch it instantly. The internet is not ready yet. Until I have a 1000mbit line, I won’t use digital distribution for 50gb downloads. But I still love Pixeljunk Monsters on my Ps3 though, that is still digitally distributed even for it’s small size? right?
I think everybody here hasn’t really been researching this that well.
How many of your mothers really care about higher resolution than 1080p. In fact how many will even tell the difference. I definitely can’t because I tend to care about more important things when watching a movie (for example what the resolution is showing no ‘ t the resolution itself(don’t spend too much time thinking about that, I didn’t)).
Keith K: Of course tv’s will be upgraded. But you don’t think that they will upgrade DVD along with it if not have it backwards compatible. One of the basics in technology is that everything is built upon the old technology. Or did you think that an old gramophone and a dvd player were completely unrelated.
Another thing is that we are already beginning to have the technology for digital distribution. It will only be a few years before we all have 50 mb/s speeds at the same money that will always do 50 mb/s because of fibre optic or 5 gb/s transfer because of USB 3.0.
In the end I see Blu-Ray as a gimmick. A useless extra. Something which we don’t need and don’t really notice anyway. It’s been made to be a “win” for Sony to boast about the Ps3. You can say I’m being a fan boy, and I may be, but it’s true and you’re being a fan boy for saying other wise.
Lono: Well given that Microsoft did back HD-DVD somewhat, I guess it could be considered Sony vs MS. I just never saw it like that. Especially given that there would never be a Blu-Ray player on 360…at least not at the time anyway. Perhaps they didn’t care.
Come to think of it, I honestly didn’t give a damn about Blu-Ray. Figured it would be another failed format.
Strandli: I get what you’re saying about broadband not being everywhere, but I have 5mb Cable and I STILL wouldn’t download a 50GB movie. If people want the movie to look really good, yes, they’ll go out and buy the disc. However, the point is that most people don’t give a damn about higher resolution. They prefer the ease of use. Most people are perfectly happy setting it up on their Netflix Queue and streaming it to the Roku box or 360. Or they download it via iTunes to watch on their mp3 player or something similar.
This whole “Format War” boiled down to “Your movies will look beautiful.” Some are anal about stuff like that. Most aren’t.
Netflix? What’s Netflix?
Oh I know. It’s a service available only in the United States.
Clearly a contender for the mass market….
What is it with Americans and their complete lack of acknowledgement of the world beyond their borders?