vaguelyaware.com

As Toshiba, the major backer of the HD DVD format, lowers its prices (50%) on players to attract more buyers the question again arises about which high definition format will reign supreme. I’m going to answer this question for everyone debating it.

The answer is, who cares?

High speed broadband is nearly everywhere, where it isn’t people probably don’t care much about high def DVDs anyway. With the introduction of downloadable, rentable, high def movies straight to your tv, no one will care to shuffle through discs to watch their movies. Especially when those discs offer more content restrictions than their less expensive downloadable counterparts. I can watch the same movie without using gas to get to the store, or energy in the production, packaging or distribution of the disc, and I can watch it on my TV, iPod, computer or phone. I haven’t seen any bluray phones yet, that will be Sony’s next Xbox killer (sarcasm… I hope).

A friend of mine, Larry, proposed that the reason Microsoft backed HD-DVD with their Xbox was to purposely support the loser because they want downloadable content to win, and go though their Xbox media store or whatever its called. They don’t want set top DVD players to be the future, they want software based players to be the future, because they utilize MS software.

I don’t know MS’ reasons for their selection, maybe they aren’t as crafty as we are crediting them for, but either way. I do suspect Apple is, and it appears they see the high def DVD format is as irrelevant as I am suggesting.

The internet is the new media distribution format, the rest is just a waste of R&D money.