Toshiba just stuck a fork in HD-DVD's corpse. The surprising part to me is that the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray contest ended so rapidly.
I mark the first crack in HD-DVD (where I was pretty sure it was going to lose the Format War), as coming when Warner defected on January 4. It's now February 17, and the game has ended.
There's a reasonable argument that any HD disc format is, at best, a transitional phase before we all start downloading everything and storing it on our hard drives. In my opinion, that argument is absolutely right, but I'm not sure when it all goes down.
Right now, my personal bet will be to sit on the fence. When a Blu-Ray player gets cheap enough ($200?) I'll probably buy one (instead of an Apple TV—oops, take 2...) and hook that up to my TV. But as nice as HD is, even on my HDTV, I think DVD looks pretty good. The compulsion to upgrade to anything else is not great.
Practical consumer advice? Wait until you can afford a really nice HD-switching receiver.
Comments
Sony finally wins one
The smart money in a technology format war would normally be "Bet against Sony". Consider its track record: Betamax, Minidisc, ATRAC, Memory Stick, Playstation 3, .... Based on that, I'd guessed HD-DVD was going to be the victor, but on this, I was wrong. (Good thing I didn't actually put down any money, not as a wager nor in buying any HD-DVD appliance.) Guess Sony was overdue for a win anyway.
The stacked pie chart goes into my visual information hall of shame.
It's worth noting that the
It's worth noting that the Playstation 3's sales have been improving substantially, though it must kill both Sony and Microsoft to know that they've spent over a year losing the sales race to a cheap box that doesn't cost Nintendo much to make and that doesn't even do HD.
The Wii is also the only next-gen console I own. Thanks, TLO!
Microsoft's XBox 360 is theoretically doing very well, but in practice the massive number of in-warranty failures have been a billion-dollar boondoggle for the company itself (not that they don't have billions to boondoggle, mind).
I guess what I'm saying is that while the Wii has been a financial and market-share winner for Nintendo, it's not clear that the PS3 and XBox 360 can be declared market failures. The console market may now be big enough to support three healthy players.
Ironically, Nintendo is the only one of these three companies that is undiversified enough that they need to succeed in the console business to keep their company afloat. But I darkly wonder how many times they can recreate their standard set of franchise games without their audience getting bored.
Well Ryan, if you had a
Well Ryan, if you had a 1080p TV I think you would notice a bigger difference between Blu-ray and DVD ;)
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