Will publicity win Blu-Ray vs HD Format Wars?

[ChristineCB]

Neither the Blu-Ray or HD DVD format is hands-down superior in every way (why why why?!!) and I've always seen an article a month declaring some new death-date for one format or the other.



But in the last week, I've seen 5 different ones, all saying HD was on their last leg, that Blu-Ray was the "clear winner", etc.



I haven't seen a significant price decline in any Player equipment in the past month - plenty of promises/threats - but nothing delivered. Plenty of announced titles for both formats.



Will publicity be the biggest weapon to win this dual-format war? I think it has to be.



It can't be on specifications.



It won't be on an overwhelming tide of title-availability



It obviously isn't on pricing of Players.



I think it's going to be the side that shouts the loudest and gets more people to run into stores by screaming "Fire Sale! Fire Sale!"



Or have they correctly guessed the consumer pulse which says, "Sorry - we hate format wars - we'll stick with plain DVD." If the consumers can adopt such a "Do Nothing" attitude successfully, we may show that we've learned lessons from being on the Bleeding Edge of Technology.

[Steve Crook]

name='ChristineCB']Will publicity be the biggest weapon to win this dual-format war?

It was with the Betamax vs VHS war.

Betamax was (is) higher quality although they didn't pay as much attention to the consumer's needs.



Steve

[image45]

name='Steve Crook']It was with the Betamax vs VHS war.

Betamax was (is) higher quality although they didn't pay as much attention to the consumer's needs.



Steve

Many people I know who repair and maintain old Betamax machines and VHS models tell me that once digital tracking was introduced to VHS machines they became the better of the two formats for quality of play back. Also the noise level was greater for multi generation copying for Betamax machines. I know this from my longer edits of Frontios that I had to have noise reduced on top of other corrective work due to the fact they had originated from Betamax multi-generation sources before they reached me.



Like most people who work with rare TV edits and studio material I started to use the S-VHS format once it became more established in the early 1990’s. Even now I still keep S-VHS masters of material I have on DVD due to the possibility of DVD failure so my three S-VHS machines get well maintained to keep them running fine.



Due to the way Blu-Ray encodes information I worry about how well the data will cope with long term storage as the issue with the dyes does not change with the move of formats. The high speed options mean the laser spends less time writing/burning to the dye so playback failure over time is increased once again.



I like progress however the recent issues with the life span of these digital disk formats does cause me great concern.

[ChristineCB]

I keep telling myself, "I know the world is nothing but TV Wrestling - all scripted for some bizarre reason..."



But I can't help but wonder why Blu-Ray's so-called superior video can't be married to HD's superior audio (or is it vice-versa?) and come up with a New Great Standard.



I know why - the developers want to avoid paying the other side any licensing fees. And the notion of 'compromise' with an eye toward the Bigger Prize seems to elude those nimnals.



Where IS that "Banish To Another Dimension" button on this keyboard?!!

[Steve Crook]

name='ChristineCB']Where IS that "Banish To Another Dimension" button on this keyboard?!!

What a lovely idea.

Have you ever read (or heard or seen) the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams? In one of the later books in the series he invents a great way to make things invisible. They cast a "somebody else's problem" field over it. When everyone thinks that it's somebody else's problem, everybody ignores it and it's effectively invisible



There are many inventive, clever ideas in there. I think he would have liked your button.



Steve