My eyes may deceive me, but is Sony is trying to play the nice guy in a format war? What about the other times, Betamax vs. VHS and the still on-going SACD vs. DVD-Audio? Have they finally realized that these wars risk losing the consumers interest, for either format? “Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing, and we haven’t totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise,” according to the soon to be president (Sony Electronics Business Worldwide), Ryoji Chubachi. Wow, I didn’t know Sony even knew the word “compromise”.

Analyst are trying decide what Chubachi meant by this statement. It is obvious, isn’t it? Sony is trying to act like they do not want a war; they are not keeping the fight alive. They are also giving themselves a “well, we tried” excuse if neither format is a big hit by 2006. Sony is probably thinking that this tactic of “compromise” would have been great when SACD was in the works. Now they can only blame themselves for making a CD format that is just about as universal as the Mini Disc.

Maybe the new president is trying to turn over a new leaf for Sony. Maybe he is genuine in his want for integration of the two formats. Or maybe he is smarter than his successors and realizes that the consumers are going to decide the future of next-gen HD discs. Let’s come back to the real world though.

The release of these next generation discs and players, for the US, are only about 7 months away. How can Blu-ray & HD-DVD possibly come up with integration by that point? How are they going to explain to their supporters, thus far that they have decided to go this other route and by the way, thanks for wasting your money on one format? It’s not going to happen. If it was, Sony would have come out with a plan or better yet they would have discussed this with Toshiba & NEC and both camps would have announced a plan of integration. HD-DVD turned them down once before and they still have no plan of compromise. They (Toshiba/NEC) seem to be okay with that.

A more likely scenario would be a universal player, which plays both formats as they are, but even this wouldn’t be an easy feat, as it would add another 30-40% to the cost of the players. In my opinion this whole talk of “compromise” is too little, too late.

R.Hollis

If this pans out to be true, it changes everything we’ve been told, about the impending Blu-ray, HD-DVD format war, considerably. Heise online a German technology site, appears to report that Samsung intends to “marry” a Blu-ray and HD-DVD drive together (sorry the translation was a bit rough). This fly’s in the face of everything we’ve been told so far, which includes “the rival technologies aren’t similar enough to combine into one device” and “it wouldn’t be feasible to make a high definition universal DVD player”.

I can’t speak to the validity of the report from CeBIT by Heise, but it goes without saying, that if Samsung can pull this off then the whole “Format War” may end before it ever began. This is one story I’ll be following closely.

Michael.G

As of March 10, 2005, Apple has jumped on the Blu-ray gravy train. This should not be a huge shock to anyone as most major computer companies have already joined the BDA right at its conception. Blu-ray is the obvious choice for Apple because, according to Steve Jobs, “Consumers are already creating stunning HD content with Apple’s leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high def DVD’s.”

With Blu-ray storage capacity at 50GB, instead of HD-DVD’s mere 25GB, and the up-coming release of Apple’s QuickTime software, QuickTime 7 which has been adopted for some high definition DVDs, not to mention their continuous “efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD,” it seems like Apple should have joined sooner.

Is this another nail in the coffin for HD-DVD? No, of course not. HD-DVD still has it’s share of promising backers such as major movie studios Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal. Many experts are still sighting the movie studios has being the deciding factor in this format war. Although with the computer companies siding with Blu-ray and Hollywood siding with HD-DVD, it is very possible that both will co-exists in the market of next generation optical disc for storing High Definition movies, photos and other digital content. I mean, can’t we all just get along?

R.Hollis

Paramount and Universal studios recently announced their intended pricing for pre-recorded HD-DVD titles, that are to ship in the United States late this year. How does $19-29 USD grab you? This is considerably less than the once speculated $29.00. Warner Bros & Universal Studios didn’t announce their pricing for HD-DVD’s as yet, but it is expected to be in line with the $19-29 figure.

It would appear that at least to some degree this is aimed at Sony as much as potential consumers, as Sony will have a hard time matching those prices with Blu-ray discs, as they cost more to produce.

Michael.G

To be honest the sites hiatus was due to nothing more, than lack of things to talk about. But the time passed since my last entry, is a story unto itself in a sense. It has now been nearly two months sense the initial HD-DVD titles were announced from Paramount, Universal and Warner, and still no initial Blu-Ray titles have been announced from Columbia, MGM or Disney.

Now I wouldnt have you read anything into this, but it does strike me as a little odd, we’re now some 6-8 months away from some form of high definition DVD, and only one camps titles have been announced. If I had to speculate, I’d say that the offerings from the HD-DVD side gave Sony pause, and their waiting to get enough titles lined up to make a similarly impressive press release, but this is just pure speculation.

Michael.G