Blu-ray and Sony – Does the Consumer Win?

Although Blu-ray has the edge in the format war it's far from over. The video will make a case not necessarily for HD DVD but questioning the Blu-ray format's resolve to put forth the interests of the consumer.

[Lucidmantra]

I just have an issue with the picture. SHouldn't the Blu Ray be on the traditional "MAC" guy since the "PC(Bill Gates)" guy would be a supporter on HDDVD...??

Just something to think about even though i know the poster didn't create the picture.

[SEAN1617]

it's funny because thats MS's tactic to the bone,look at windows it's a result of so many corporate take overs and stolen idea's if you have a copy of vista, then you can see it's a very big rip off of apple's OS10, now MS is Moving to the hardware aspect, tell me how is this a good thing sure things are rosy right now because ms is competing with Sony and nintendo, so it makes them innovate more and more, but if it's starts dominating they are going to turn the gameindustry to just another windows program with minimal innovations, and just another easy way to make money, and by the way i own vista, you now have to reset your owners code every 6 month via the internet and if you reinstall more then a max of 4 times no more reset pins you have to buy a new one. plus i think the hd format war is overrated you have a ton of business that are doing the D.O.I services like itune, walmart, netflicks,100tb hd coming out by 2010 why the hell would i need a disc format, so unless sony magically buys the all the internet media provider it does not own a monopoly. so you can flame me now but ask your self one question why the hell can i not have dx10 on xp? hmmmmm

[Watapata]

There are problems with a few of your arguments...which I will try to to address roughly in order...

1) Windows Vista IS NOT a ripoff of OSX. The most cursory of overviews of it can tell anyone as much. Just because they reinvented the interface and finally have a half-way decent GUI, does NOT mean that its a ripoff of OSX. They are simply providing what the customer expects. Even this new GUI though is not an OSX clone by any standards. I will admit some features seem to have been taken from OSX, but when you consider that almost every feature present in OSX was available in Linux prior to that, it becomes a moot case. I've been running Vista for a while now, and though my main computer still runs XP and Linux, I have to admit it is a much more elegant OS than anything Microsoft has released before, but it is still Windows. The outside of it looks different and there are some differences in the way things are organized over previous generations, but by and large everything that you could do in XP can be found somewhere (usually with a different name) in Vista and additionally you get the added stability that their new kernel offers. The only gripes I could level at it so far are that driver support is still minimal and support for games is not where it should be. If you insist on calling it a ripoff of another OS, Vista is really a compilation of OSX, Linux, and XP features into one package and there is nothing wrong with that. When competition hits on something, most often you try to adapt it to your own uses. When it comes down to it, outside of the appearance, most of the changes made in Vista are on the backend where the user will never notice and so Vista will be written off as less than it really is and this is rather unfortunate.

2) You make a case for digital distribution, but you neglect to put it in proper context. Digital distribution is very much the future, though it is not the immediate future as things currently stand. It is more likely at least 5-10 years off before it can dominate in any way. Even at this point though, physical media will be important. Most people want to own a physical copy of things they own whether out of paranoia or tradition, this is still the case in today's society. This will keep the physical media on top for a while yet to come, but more important is the issue of convenience and bandwidth. The high bandwidth connections necessary to make something like a high-def movie feasible on a large scale simply do not exist yet. You can point out that to an extent this is already being done, but until you can download an entire high definition move in 15-30 minutes, the physical media is going to be more convenient because the moment you buy it, you can watch it.

3) As far as DX10 goes, that is a question I can't answer of the top of my head, but there is a possibility, and in something you should probably keep an open mind to, that there is an actual reason behind it outside of money.

[SEAN1617]

tell that to the millions that hit up youtube.com or the millions that pirate movies everyday, i know it takes a while to download but the new internet services are already here, we have fiber optic net here in japan, any who you have some valid points ,but as far as an os goes if you agree that the user interface looks alike and the gui is almost the same what else is there?