Format war Bluray vs hddvd...

[CapAmerica]

I'm not a supporter of either format, The way I see it all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are fighting over is who gets the title of being the Next LaserDisc. The way I see it the winner of this new format war isn't going to be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD its going to be Digital Distribution (iTunes, AmazonUnbox and XboxLive MarketPlace).

Physical Media is a dead format, when you are stuck using a physical media your are always going to be limited to how much your can store on it and you will always face having to upgrade every 5 years (or so). Also physical media also has that small little problem of getting damaged and not working any more and when that happens your screwed and have to buy it all over again.
With Digital Distribution you never have to worry about losing your purchased movie, If the file is deleted by mistake you can just re-download it for free. Once you pay for it you'll never have to pay for it again. And with Digital Distribution if a movie ever gets upgraded for better quality its a free upgrade (At least with iTunes).

Now before you say, "why would I use iTunes (or any other digital distributed media) I can't watch them on my HDTV." Not true, Apple now has AppleTV which allows you to watch (and listen) to any media purchased off of iTunes on your HDTV. Microsoft has the Xbox360 which allows you to watch your movies which you have purchased from XboxLive Market Place. And If all else fails their is always MediaCenter PCs which are becoming cheaper every year and support any format you can already watch on your home PC.

Now One may say, Digital Distribution will never take off because people want to own a physical media copy, Well yes there are people out there that want to own a actual disc (or tape) so they feel that they truly own something. The thing is that market doesn't care about HD movies they are perfectly fine with DVDs, Hell most were fine with VHS tapes and have only recently converted over to DVD do to the fact VHS movies are no longer made. The people who want a physical HD media are part of a very small group and are not in the same group as people who are interested in HD movies, The people who want HD movies are excited and accepting digital distribution. The people who still want physical media are a user base who doesn't care about HD Movies.

If you were to look at how well iTunes, AmazonUnbox and XboxLive Media are doing you would see that their movies are vastly outselling that of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray put together. It is currently hard to get the sale figures for Amazon and XboxLive, But Apple is more then willing to post their sale figures.

*Please Note that the iTune Sale Figures are actually 2 months out dated compared to that of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. These were the newest figures I could find at the time I wrote this.

*Also Please Note That I'm aware of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are for just movies. The info came from Video Business but it does say "Total disc sales" so it could be including blank discs and Blu-Ray games.

Format	Movies Sold	Format Launch	Date # are from
iTunes	1,300,000	Sept. 12, 2006	Jan 10, 2007
HD-DVD	650,000	March 31, 2006	March 9, 2007
Blu-Ray	675,000	March 3, 2003	March 9, 2007

Digital Distribution is the future, people who fear it most likely have no plans to part ways with their DVDs anyway.