The End of HD DVD - A Little Review

Let's begin with a quick little review of Blu-ray and HD-DVD. If you don't know what these are, you should read this or you will be completely lost. Think of Blu-ray and HD-DVD as the old school Betamax and VHS. This same thing is happening here. That catchy phrase "History repeats itself" comes to mind. Sony produced and promoted the Blu-ray format, while Toshiba did likewise for HD-DVD.

Blu-ray uses a blue ray (laser) to read and write data to a disc. The blue wave length is smaller than the traditional red laser. Each layer of a Blu-ray disc holds more data as compared to an HD-DVD disc and also has a protective layer between the world and the layers of data. This is a nice little perk as it keeps the discs clean and protected from bumps and scratches. The makers of Blu-ray went all out and didn't stop advancing technology due to the price. Their products cost double that of HD-DVD but did that kill them?

HD-DVD had quite a few things going for it. While it didn't have as much space per layer as Blu-ray, the discs did have plenty of room for high-definition movies along with the bonus features. HD-DVD's push to the market was the price. Both started out around $1,000 per player, but HD-DVD players drastically came down in price.  Their players can now be had for under $200 and their movies are typically cheaper compared to Blu-ray movies. Consumers love cheaper prices, and so do manufacturers. So did the lack of the best technology hurt HD-DVD?

Going into the holiday of 2008, both were neck and neck and doing very well. When you bought a player, you typically got five to seven free movies along with it. It made next generation players a lot more attractive. For $150-$400, you got at least $100 in free movies. At the same time, many places were offering buy one get one free or buy two get one free deals. This made making the switch all the more manageable. I would say that at the holidays, both were about the same in market share. From December to February, what could have happened that made one of them take a belly flop?

Next: What happened? >>
 

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