August 21, 2007

Blue Ray Vs HD DVD - The Format War

The format wars are on and this time between Sony's Blu Ray Disk (BD ) and Toshiba and Nec's HD DVD. Sony is betting big on its blu Ray Format, so much so that it is willing to make a Loss of $241.35 on every PlayStation 3 console it sells at $599, and $306.85 on every PS3 console it sells with a smaller hard drive at $499.

Sony isn't in the mood of corporate generosity, it is willing to bear the loss for the sake of putting a Blu Ray Disk player in most homes to give an advantage on the Format wars

The battle lines are drawn with major media corporation choosing the sides. Blu-ray Disc is exclusively supported by Columbia Pictures and MGM ( owned by Sony), as well as Disney, 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate. While paramount, Universal Studios Dreamworks and even microsoft have pledged support to HD DVD.

Wasn't long ago when were using 1.44 Mb of 3½-inch Floppy disk here comes Blu Ray disk with 50 GB of Optical memory ! A dual layer of HD DVD have about 30 GB of space. The reason they can store so much data as compared to a standard DVD is due to the fact they use Blue/violet Rays to read and store data which are shorter in wave length hence the name Blue Ray.

With this format war on full onslaught where does this leave you ? Well history is testament one will loose like the case of VHS and Betamax where VHS won the war even though sony's Betamax was superior technology doe a Marketing coop by VHS.

So you are better off waiting till the Universal Players (which plays both format) gets cheaper and better. Both LG and Samsung have launched these players.

One thing about format wars is that, the case of VHS has shown that not always the best technology wins.