Looks like Blu-Ray is going to be the HDTV disk standard. This time, Betamax won. 🙂
That’s not necessarily a good thing.
What strikes me as being interesting about this is how much Blu-Ray’s early win will affect pricing the next few years.
People always complain about multiple incompatible standards, but competitions between such standards do improve the products and drive down prices.
Will Blu-Ray’s early win mean prices will slide but slowly, with improvements aetting the same pace?
And if so, will something else take HD-DVD’s place? Perhaps China’s CH-DVD, or maybe something new, something PC/Internet-based. After all, a movie doesn’t have to come on a disk.
Or maybe people will find watching DVDs through an cheap upscaler will be good enough.
Either way, the Blu-Ray people need to realize that they need to compete against themselves just as fiercely as if HD-DVD were alive and well, since the HD-DVD/Blu-ray fight was just a qualifying round to see who would take on the current champ: DVD.
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