RIP HD-DVD

A moment of silence, please.

Wait a minute, on second thought: light up a cigar. Let's get this party started!

Format wars suck. They're bad for the consumer since some early adopters are bound to get screwed over. They're bad for the industry since total unit sales are generally lower since the user base is split, and smart people don't even invest until a winner is decided. The war itself is really one big beta test, making the early adopters flush out the kinks and allowing the winning company to optimize the product by the time it hits the mass market.

Some format wars are fine. Say, when the industry involved allows for choice. Take digital music formats, for example. It's fine (but still stupid) that there are about 600 different music types out there (mp3, mp2, wav, wma, ogg, aac, m4a, aiff, voc, etc.) because there are plenty of players that are compatible with a variety of formats. You won't usually find a CD player that plays minidiscs though. Dual HD players are a temporary solution, but are absurdly expensive.

It's a shame that high definition movies won't even make much of a dent in the overall home video market. DVD was able to decimate VHS due to the extra features and accessibility (in the form of chapter selection, multiple language tracks, no rewinding, ummm... bonus features, etc.) that came along with it; the increased visual clarity was just a bonus. And all this for less than what VHS tapes cost.

Blu-Ray, for the most part, only offers increased resolution. There are various potential web based features that could be implemented, but everything else has pretty much either already been done, or is capable with DVD also, given the right player. This is not enough to get the average consumer to make the switch. Especially when you consider these resolutions are only applicable with the proper TV. I believe just under 200 million Blu-Ray movies were sold in 2007, compared with over 15 billion DVDs. Blu-Ray's got a long way to go to become the standard.

However, if it should catch on within the same time frame that DVD did, it'll cause ripples throughout the entire tech universe. Since PS3's have been and continue to be the cheapest Blu-Ray (BR) option on the market, the take off of the BR brand will cause the sales of PS3's to skyrocket, if Joe Consumer has any shred of common sense (hmmm, I can buy this BR player, or this BR player with built in video game system for $100 less). A shift of that magnitude would drastically alter the gaming industry (I won't go into that right now, God only knows no one's even read this far).

The BR standard would most likely cause it to become the de-facto packed in optical drive with all new computers. The licensing fees Sony earns from this would give them the capital, and the motivation, to include DRM features into any number of common programs. Sony would effectively take over the Earth, infusing the populace with microprocessors and ginseng. The world would end as we know it...

Wow. Really got on a bit of a tangent there. I think I need to go lie down.