Format Wars: We Have A Winner
If you have a HD-TV and you bought a Blu-Ray DVD player to watch Spider-Man 3, 300 or X-Men The Last Stand in all their high-definition glory, congratulations. You win. It looks like Toshiba is about to throw in the towel on their HD-DVD format.
Left at the alter by such outlets as Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart and supported by an ever-shrinking number of studio releases, Toshiba tried slashing the price of their players and their discs – to no avail. Now Microsoft is talking about making its next X-Box compatible with Blu-Ray, a format also supported by a great many computer companies; Toast and other DVD authoring software also burn to Blu-Ray discs.
Sony had hoped for an immediate win with its Blu-Ray, but its delays in marketing the Playstation 3 game machine and software put them in second position. As movies became available and people could see the difference between the two formats, consumers voted with their credit cards.
So when the Iron Man movie comes out on DVD this fall, you won’t have to toss the dice. You’ll be able to see each and every hair in Tony Stark’s goatee with alarming clarity.
Well, maybe by the holiday season at year's end we will see prices on the players and disks come down to more reasonable levels. At this point – the dispute took so long that I expect the internet and cable and satellite delivery is going to have a big hold on the HD market. Personally I just keep picking up 500GB portable hard disks to store my HD movies and concerts. At about $100 a pop it is a lot more cost effective.For the long run – we really are at a point where files are the future.
I saw my first HDTV in a doctor's waiting room recently and although the detail was quite impressive, the cost is not worth it.
It'll continue to drop. Before you know it, they'll be pasting them onto Post Toasties boxes.
Oops, forgot the Post Toasties boxtops with my Contact! It would have to drop a lot to be worth it because I almost never just sit and watch TV/DVD. I almost always do handwork at the same time, so in a lot of ways, I'm listening to TV/DVD with occasional glances at the screen.