Tag: Format War

For all of you who’ve been holding out hope that HD DVD might stage a comeback in its stand against the rapidly gaining Blu-ray format, I think that it’s time to count HD DVD down for the count.

According to a recent report from ABI Research, the HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray format war will be won not by either format, but by dual-format players, such as the recently released LG BH100 combo player. According to the Steve Wilson, ABI’s principal consumer electronics analyst: “We believe that universal players will come to dominate the high-definition DVD player market.” In addition to the LG player that hit shelves this week, Samsung and other vendors are expected to release combination HD DVD / Blu-Ray players in the coming months.

This is starting to sound like the early days of the war in Iraq… Apparently, while we were off living our lives, Blu-ray became the “overwhelming” victor in the high definition format wars. Here are some excerpts from today’s overly self-congratulatory press release from the Blu-ray Disc Association, titled Consumers Overwhelmingly Choose “Blu”: The Blu-ray Disc Association today declared its victory as the premiere high definition DVD format of choice… The success of Blu-ray Disc is unprecedented… consumers have voted with their wallets for the format that offers the widest array of hardware and content on the market.

A while back we reported that Ricoh was working on a optical mechanism that could handle both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. At next week’s CES show, it’s expected that two companies will be showing off their proposed solutions to dealing with the incompatible formats.