Blu-ray & HD-DVD format integration? Not likely.
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