It's official. Today not only marks the death of a vicious two-year
format war, but also the death of Toshiba's much touted HD DVD. While
the demise of HD DVD has seemed imminent over the past few weeks with
the announcement of the last major studios and equipment manufacturers
going exclusively Blu-Ray, it didn't always seem that way. In fact, if
I recall, it was only a year ago that HD DVDs and HD DVD players were
out-selling Blu-Ray discs and players by more 60%. Toshiba, the
creator of the HD DVD format, thought they were a shoe-in from the
start, saying that Blu-Ray would fall just as Sony's other proprietary
BETA format had in the 1980s. The argument was that Blu-Ray was new,
its specs weren't finished, and all it had going for it was that the
PS3 had it built in. Guess they were wrong... and rightfully so.

Where Toshiba failed in all of this, was the lack of acknowledgement
of an educated consumer base. Unlike the technology consumer of the
80's, 21st century consumers are armed with a wealth of knowledge when
it comes to their next tech purchase. People can tell when picture
quality is better. People know that more storage is better than less
storage. People knew that Blu-Ray was the format of the future.

This brings up the question, that was often overlooked: was HD DVD
really just old technology trying to get it's last hoo-haa? HD DVD is
just a DVD with more layers and tighter data paths. And, for that
matter a DVD is just a CD with more layers and tighter data paths.
Need I remind you that the CD was invented in the 1970's? The 70's!
Are you kidding me? I would hope that we aiming for the future when we
choose the next format to dominate our HD movie viewing experience,
rather than relying on the last breath of an almost 40 year-old
technology. Blu-Ray opens up a whole new world of opportunity
when it comes to optical disc storage. While currently limited to
around 50GB of storage, more than twice that of HD DVD, its limits
are currently boundless. Blu-Ray is like the CD of the 1970's; it has
lots of opportunities for improvement in the future.

So if Blu-Ray is so great, why was there this awful consumer-hurting
format war? Simple. Toshiba had a format that was backwards compatible
with DVD, and was a quick fix solution for getting High-Def movies to
consumers. This format was HD DVD. Blu-Ray on the other hand was a new
format, that was untested, but with a bright and shiny future. It
could hold more, the picture quality was better and the possibilities
were endless. However, many large studios and equipment manufacturers
(a.k.a. Microsoft and Toshiba) thought it would be smart if they stuck to
something people already knew: DVD. Therefore, HD DVD became the
preferred format. If anything though, this format war may have
actually helped Blu-Ray establish it self as a strong, proven format
for the future.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us in a rather comfortable
place actually. There will be strong investments in Blu-Ray
technology, the costs will go down, and then there will be a major
push to get all consumers to switch. It will be like the transition to
DVD was, only smoother. Yes, there was this two-year long battle, but
from here on out it looks like smooth sailing. Most of the kinks Blu-
Ray had when it was released have been fixed by Sony, and Samsung, the
leaders of the Blu-Ray group. Furthermore, it is the beginning of a
bright future technology. Expect bigger and better Blu-Ray in the
years to come.