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Sunday, April 23, 2006
Rivals in DVD format battle await consumer response
It seems to me that the same thing was said about DVD's that they would never make it, and people would not replace their extensive VHS collections with new DVD's. However we look back at this 7 years later and now we wonder how we ever did without DVD's. The way to look at this is not will people pay money for these new things (because we know they will) but do HD DVD's bring something new to home entertainment. I think the answer is yes, people crave high quility everything, and HD is just a higher quility experience, so I think yes HD DVD's will become the way of the future.
ok. big misunderstanding. here's the thing. HD does not solely mean "High Definition" as we know it in TV. In the case of these next generation optical formats, HD means "High Density". The point is, you will be able to fit more on a DVD. A lot more. (30 Gb on a dual layer HD-DVD or 50 Gb on a Blu-Ray Disc). This opens up huge doors for the entertainment industry and makes these (or, whichever is the winner of the format battle) an absolute must-have for both the studios and the consumers. While sometimes the extra space will allow for High-Def content (a perk which is actually a pretty big deal to a lot of consumers) more importantly, the new formats will allow for more content. This means more movie and more special features. Say goodbye to 2-Disc sets; Say hello to entire seasons of TV being on a single disc. And this is only about video - the implications for software and data storage are endless.
This is not a no-big-deal development. Like the article says, many consumers will wait till the format battle has yielded a victor, but once the next format is decided by the market, the market will embrace it whole-heartedly and it will take off like wildfire.
Just yesterday, I was looking and couldn't find a single store in the Pittsburgh area that sold new VHS. 6 years from now, we're talking about the same situation with measly 4.7, 8.54, 9.4, or 17.08 Gb DVDs.
I'll just be interested to see if the sales or the technology wins this time. In the end VHS beat Beta even though Beta was arguably a better technology.
3 comments:
It seems to me that the same thing was said about DVD's that they would never make it, and people would not replace their extensive VHS collections with new DVD's. However we look back at this 7 years later and now we wonder how we ever did without DVD's. The way to look at this is not will people pay money for these new things (because we know they will) but do HD DVD's bring something new to home entertainment. I think the answer is yes, people crave high quility everything, and HD is just a higher quility experience, so I think yes HD DVD's will become the way of the future.
Sam Zarn
ok. big misunderstanding. here's the thing. HD does not solely mean "High Definition" as we know it in TV. In the case of these next generation optical formats, HD means "High Density". The point is, you will be able to fit more on a DVD. A lot more. (30 Gb on a dual layer HD-DVD or 50 Gb on a Blu-Ray Disc). This opens up huge doors for the entertainment industry and makes these (or, whichever is the winner of the format battle) an absolute must-have for both the studios and the consumers. While sometimes the extra space will allow for High-Def content (a perk which is actually a pretty big deal to a lot of consumers) more importantly, the new formats will allow for more content. This means more movie and more special features. Say goodbye to 2-Disc sets; Say hello to entire seasons of TV being on a single disc. And this is only about video - the implications for software and data storage are endless.
This is not a no-big-deal development. Like the article says, many consumers will wait till the format battle has yielded a victor, but once the next format is decided by the market, the market will embrace it whole-heartedly and it will take off like wildfire.
Just yesterday, I was looking and couldn't find a single store in the Pittsburgh area that sold new VHS. 6 years from now, we're talking about the same situation with measly 4.7, 8.54, 9.4, or 17.08 Gb DVDs.
I'll just be interested to see if the sales or the technology wins this time. In the end VHS beat Beta even though Beta was arguably a better technology.
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