Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD -- Give us a break!

[tenguzero]

While I've always generally supported Sony's stuff (particularly after a Discman I had once upon a time took major beatings on several occasions and kept kicking -- until it was stolen ) But there's some aspects of Sony that have never ceased to piss me off -- namely major product implementation practices that, if they weren't such a damn behemoth of a company, would probably otherwise cost them a lot of customers.

The entertainment industry was going VHS, Sony hocked Betamax. The consumer/personal electronics industry generally uses Compact Flash or SD memory cards (with a lot of things like PDA's providing support for both) Sony hocks MemoryStick/MS PRO. Every home video game system released domestically since the Nintendo64 (up to this point) provided 4 player capability right out of the box -- except for the Playstation 2. And now Sony is hellbent on Blu-Ray. Personally, it doesn't really matter either way to me, as I always seem to have much more important things to spend my money on than big-ticket HiDef equipment and big screen plasma/LCD TV's (and I refuse to join the masses and put all this stuff "on credit." ) However, I still feel it's rather unfair to the average consumers -- many of which could stand to benefit from an entire college-semester class on just universal remote operation -- to launch competing formats. A good deal of people got really burned money wise by Beta. I honestly don't know how it is that the entire consumer electronics market has been able to grow to the size it is now, since there is a LOT of dumb, gimmicky crap out there. And let's face it, HD STILL hasn't really panned out. Blu-Ray, HD DVD. Blu-Ray, HD DVD. We don't care what the hell happens -- just don't burn us.

[Oz]

I think the race for an 'emerging standard', particularly in this instance, is always very interesting and having a variety of products and standards on offer will USUALLY (not in the case of VHS/betamax, betamax WAS superior before it died) mean that the BEST technology becomes the ingrained standard.


And if consumers get burned in the process, who do they have to blame but themselves? They are the early adopters with too much f*&king money who (hopefully) made an informed decision at the time - and prepred themselves for a worst case scanario where the format they have chosen dies out to another format.

I would also suggest that those who can throw thousands of dollars away at a whim will just decide to update to the latest and greatest without much thought anyway.

[Muscletang]

On the Blu-Ray side is Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony, TDK, Thomson, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Walt Disney Company and its home-video division Buena Vista Entertainment. In addition, video gaming powerhouse Electronic Arts, along with Vivendi Universal Games.

VS.

The main backer of the HD-DVD format is Toshiba, Paramount, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. (along with Time Warner-owned New Line Cinema)

So who is going to last longer?

SOURCE:A good story that I think explains things very well.

[CaptainBennett]

Blu-Ray, HD DVD. Blu-Ray, HD DVD. We don't care what the hell happens -- just don't burn us.[/quote]

Amen to that. I really dont see how HD-DVD will take off. Blue Ray I can understand, mainly because of the implementation with the PS3.