What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?

Even if you don't care one bit - and this probably describes the vast majority of Americans - you have probably heard by now that a Great Format War has been fought, and apparently won. The HD-DVD format for DVDs, backed by Toshiba, has lost out to Sony's Blu-ray format. To be sure, there are some caveats. In this Computerworld article, for instance, Lucas Mearian writes that Blu-ray's victory may not be remotely as meaningful as it seems.

[resistance100]

Simple really, they are the same lessions we learn't from the Betamax and VHS war

[HighDefinition]

Sony obviously knows what their doing, since this is the 2nd time they`ve made a mass difference in what will come out on top.

[damnwrx]

This is a question?

[mikeslemonade]

If you did the research then you bought blu-ray, but if you're shortsighted then you bought HD-DVD.

[Blademask]

1. Never bet against Disney.

[mighty_douche]

I guess not betting against a hardware juggernaut like Sony would be a good start.

But, more importantly. I hope the industry has learnt to not let this mess happen to the consumer again.

[MikeGdaGod]

if sony builds it into their system, game over

[I Love Xbox 360]

The Lesson Win !

[meepmoopmeep]

i learned that it doesn't even help reducing your product to bargain basement prices to try and win.

[VirusE]

What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again and maybe after your proprietary formats fail over and over and over and over again you may get one to stick.

[sak500]

LOL nice.. Betamax/umd/minidisc RIPs

[7h3ultim8p00]

LOL bubbles. Exactly. Sony really deserved to win this one lol.

[Armyless]

-

[Quickstrike]

Never go against Sony. They will pwn u sooner or later

[PimpHandStrong]

was to go ask Sony what there plans are for the future

[Sir Ken Kutaragi 3]

...Don't Trust Micro$oft!!!

[I Call 9MM]

Lesson learned: if your product is supposed to cost less, make sure it does. HD-DVD was touted as being cheaper to make discs then the blue-ray versions, yet they priced them the same. Had that been different, HD-DVD probably would have won. That was one of their biggest mistakes I think.

[7h3ultim8p00]

True, so true. Greed always ****s everything up.

[primordialmeme]

Enough articles on this crap, its over. So get over it! Stop with this incessant qualifying of it.

[Dragonopolis]

there are a huge amount of Americans that cared about it. Lot of us held off purchasing for quite awhile because we were concerned about investing into either format with the risk of investing into the losing format. It is however, much better this time than it was when my father had to decide between Beta max and VHS. Beta max was clearly superior than VHS but the industry went with VHS. This time around it really didn't matter which format won quality was almost impossible to tell apart when watching but we wanted one format. Actually, America would have supported two formats if the movie industry did but of course they did not.

Now that there is a push toward one format you will see more adoption and less hesitation from Americans. It will still take a year to absorb into the minds of all Americans but yes to some extent Blu-ray victory is just that a victory not the end of the war. Blu-ray camp needs to now battle it out with the ole format and convince people all over the world that Blu-ray is better for HD than upscaled ole DVD.

[PSWe60]

I support Blu-Ray, I own a PS3, Hell, I'M EVEN sick of articles like these, this whole article basically states what everyone has known, no predictions other than Blu-Ray will take a while to break into the mainstream. Thank you for the news flash...

This just in....The Berlin Wall has come down....America welcomes it's 47th state into the union....The Earth is round...

[Rageanitus]

Think at both sides of the picture, manufacture and consumer side

1) will consumers demand hi def (yes)
2) is there enough money to made from a specific side (toshiba players were artificially cheap hence swaying away other manufcatures for making players)

[Tyrael]

I've learned that at the end of the day, no matter how costly for the developers, a great format war will always lead to a significant and quicker price cut for both sides, so that the consumers can enjoy the breakthrough technology at a sooner time. Sucks we had to wait for Blu-ray, but hey, at least it's a lot cheaper now eh?

[ben hates you]

fanboys are arrogant

[lsujester]

I've learned that these so-called "experts" have way too much faith in the present network capabilities. "Blu-ray victory is meaningless," they say, "Downloadable content is where it's at."

Yeah, DC is the future... when we all have multi-terabyte hard drives and networks that download at hundreds of MB per second. Until then, I'll buy discs, thank you very much.

I also have no desire to rent a video for a day, when i can go buy it at Wal-Mart for the rest of my life.

[level 360]

Go with the one who offers the *Best possible feature.

So when it's time for another change you have a pretty much good *Benchmark to follow upon.

And this goes on and on...