Wednesday 27 February 2008

HD-DVD KO'd

So, as is common knowledge at the moment, Blu Ray have appeared to have won the war. Toshiba announced last week that they were no longer making anymore players and Microsoft officially announced that they would no longer make thier add-on for the 360.

Its good news that after 2 years that the format war is finally come to an end. Its a shame that the better product for consumers didn't win though. HD-DVD was certainly imo better than Blu Ray, having more features and better picture (according to many reviews) , the greater sound and best of all the better price

With Blu Ray having to play catch up on most features that the HD-DVD player provided (PIP, firmware upgrades etc), lets hope that the price will now follow, as Blu Ray seem to be pricing themselves out the market. With HD-DVD players now as cheap as DVD players (Xbox add-on only $50 in the states), it seems that HD-DVD will end this war with a large, but worthless final battle.

Does all this matter? imho NO. Blu Ray will never over take DVD's, just like minidiscs never had a touch on CD sales. This whole Format battle was a waste of time.

With Upscalers out there now, capable of upscaling to near high def visuals, I cant see many people ditching there DVD's for expensive Blu Ray discs.

Further more, the future of Video will follow the direct path of Music, I have no doubt about that. Downloading will become more and more popular and accessible and with many streaming devices now available, the future is surely Digital Distribution.

Microsoft and Apple have jumped on to the downloading band wagon and offer hours of HD content through the 360 and Apple TV.

Both act as streaming devices too, so you can even watch all your divx collection in front of the TV, as you can with the PS3, ipod touch , Pinnacle devices and loads more of equipment out there.

Digital Distribution is the future, and all the big names have set themselves up for this. Blu Ray is just a mear stepping stone.

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