The DVD Format War Hits Consumers - Which to use?
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Now that the war has trickled down to immediately affect the consumers, what do we do now? Which would be the right product to use?
The answer to this might not be as clear cut as you think. Consider these facts:
- Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players will be backwards compatible with current DVDs. There will be no need to replace your whole collection.
- Major studios have announced intentions to publish on one, the other, or even both formats.
- The actual Blu-ray and HD-DVD media are comparably priced, at approximately $20/disc. This will obviously come down, with time.
- Both formats support HD resolutions up to 1080 lines, which keeps them fairly even, quality-wise.
- Both formats include many levels of copy protection, aimed at protecting the rights of the content owners.
- Microsoft has announced that both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats will be available for the XBOX 360, as external components.
- Some hardware vendors have announced they will create unified hardware solutions that work with both standards.
- Both standards will support hybrid, which contains a regular DVD format underneath the new generation format, so the DVDs will still work in traditional DVD players. The users will just not have access to the higher quality video, and the additional special features.
So my question, at this point is why? Why do we even HAVE two standards if they are so similar? How confusing is it going to be for a consumer when he goes to the store to buy a movie, and it's sitting there in three formats on the shelf? Which one does he pick?
Maybe none. There’s already a new format on the horizon that is attempting to be the next generation format, and replace HD-DVD and Blu-ray. It's called HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc), and discs using this technology can hold 3.9 TERABYTES of data. That is over 160 times the capacity of a single layer Blu-ray disc.
Between you and me, this is one war that I think I may just sit out. If HVD is where we will be in a few years, I’ll just wait.
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