i read this article and figured i would share.
If you're a fan of epic drama, you probably don't think about the consumer electronics industry, where the battles are usually fought on the microscopic level: the smallest hard drive, the tiniest transistor, the fastest chip.
But a few weeks ago, a much bigger battle — the one being fought for your entertainment dollar — may have finally been won. And it's going to affect you immediately. The decisive shots in this conflict were fired just two days before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, on Jan. 4.
The result: Americans are about to throw the full weight of the $23 billion they spend every year on DVD rentals and purchases toward one, new, winning movie format.
The winner is: the new DVD disc format called Blu-ray. The loser: a format called HD-DVD. Both discs look like regular DVDs, and both are read by a player that uses a blue-wavelength laser, and both allow incredible movie pictures. But because the two had slightly different ways of reading these new discs (and were backed by two warring consortiums), the two technologies weren't compatible. Remember Betamax vs. VHS? Same idea.
But now the battle is coming to a close, with Blu-ray coming out on top. We'll go into why Blu-ray has almost certainly won in a moment. But first, the big picture. Literally: If you'd heard rumors about how beautiful the new players and DVD discs are, you heard right — the new, ultra-high-definition players and discs produce the most gorgeous, vivid movie and TV pictures you've ever seen. If you haven't had a chance to see one, go to an electronics retailer on your next trip to the mall — they'll have these players on display now.
The picture simply looks richer. And there's a simple technological reason: The blue wavelength of the light in the machine's laser is shorter, so it can read more information in less space than the old-style DVD, which used a longer-wavelength red laser. And the more information stored on a disc, the richer (and prettier) the picture. For those who need numbers, here they are: A single-sided Blu-ray disc can hold about 25 gigabytes of information, vs. a conventional DVD disc, which holds the 4.7 gigabytes. Soon, a double-layer Blu-ray disc will be able to hold up to 50 gigabytes. And again, the more information stored in one spot on a disc, the richer and more "dense" the picture looks.
But back to the war: Why are we saying HD-DVD has lost to Blu-ray? Especially since the basic idea — a blue laser reading lots of information in a small space — is the same for each format? Good question: To be sure, there are those who will disagree with our call. Some who follow the industry, like pundits who follow the presidential election, think it could be too soon to declare a winner.
But here are the facts: Blu-ray movie titles have been outselling HD-DVD titles by a ratio of about 2 to 1. And movie studios, which release their titles after they appear in theaters (and sometimes before) were watching closely to see what you bought. You answered, and they responded.
Another reason: The Blockbuster movie-rental chain chose Blu-ray as its exclusive next-generation movie format. Other than Netflix, they're the only other major rental game in town. Then, on Jan. 4, when Warner Bros. decided to abandon the HD-DVD format completely and only produce movies on Blu-ray discs, it meant that all but two major studios — Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal) — were going with Blu-ray. Within days of the announcement, Toshiba (which helped develop the HD-DVD) canceled its glitzy CES party in Las Vegas and dropped the prices on its HD-DVD players dramatically, in some cases to under $150. So the writing was on the wall.
Finally, speaking of writing, consider Juliet's painful rationalization in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." When she asks, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet," the answer, of course, is "Everything" is in a name. When it comes to success in the high-tech business, names often matter. Blu-ray — a format that, like HD-DVD, uses blue-colored lasers — sounds like what it is. Its competition didn't. So a rose might smell as sweet, but it apparently doesn't sell as sweet. See you at the movies.
