Blu-Ray Format Triumphs
When it comes to technology format wars, the best doesn’t always win out. Many other factors (generally of the economic variety) dictate which format comes out on top in a particular field. The classic example is VHS’s triumph over the technologically superior Betamax format at the dawn of the home-video era.
So, it was a pleasant surprise to read news stories yesterday about the triumph of the Blu-Ray disc format over its technologically inferior rival, HD-DVD (single layer Blu-Ray discs hold 25 GB to HD-DVD’s 15 GB). Toshiba, which was the company behind HD-DVD, capitulated on Tuesday, announcing that it was suspending development of the format, which was losing its attempts to become the disc of choice for high-definition DVD movies. The nails in the coffin of HD-DVD were recent announcements that movie retailers like Amazon.com, Blockbuster, Netflix, and Wal-Mart were all going exclusively with Blu-Ray.
So why am I writing about it in this blog? After all, EM is concerned with recording gear not consumer electronics. The answer is that now that the format war has ended, we can expect to see lower priced Blu-Ray disc drives for computers, allowing data-hungry recordists to store and backup large projects to disc that in the past exceeded the capacity of conventional DVD drives. Imagine being able to archive up to 25 GB at a time (double that on double-layer drives). I presume that prices will come down for both the drives and the discs. Now we can buy Blu-Ray gear without the fear of the format dying after we’ve invested in hardware—at least not until the next best thing comes along.
