I don't understand why most people insist that the last format war was the vhs/betamax war. In fact, the last format war was the proliferation of dvd r-/+ rw-/+ DVD RAM (am I forgetting a format?) And what of CD vs. MP3 - not to mention DVD vs. CD. And now we have DVD players that play all DVD formats, CD's, mp3s, jpeg files. They do everything but serve you breakfast in bed. And let's not forget about computer DVD/CD drives as well.
In the last 5 years we have had a proliferation of all kinds of formats and the market place has shown us that people want a simple solution - a DVD drive (whether stand alone or computer) that accepts all formats - and one that accepts not only movies, but also computer files, pictures, song files, etc. Go into J&R and check out the stacked boxes of DVD players, you'll see what I mean. They'll play anything you throw at them. And why not? I sure as h--- wouldn't buy one if it didn't. Would you?
I believe that this notion of a "winner" of the HD format war is one that has been promoted by backers of both formats. It's propaganda. In fact, if we look at history and the market place, co-existence is a much more common phenomenon (but one that neither Blu-Ray nor Toshiba like!) than a dominating format.
I'll be waiting to buy my next gen DVD player when a reasonably priced dual format player comes out - then I won't care who wins this silly war.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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I don't understand why most people insist that the last format war was the vhs/betamax war. In fact, the last format war was the proliferation of dvd r-/+ rw-/+ DVD RAM (am I forgetting a format?) And what of CD vs. MP3 - not to mention DVD vs. CD. And now we have DVD players that play all DVD formats, CD's, mp3s, jpeg files. They do everything but serve you breakfast in bed. And let's not forget about computer DVD/CD drives as well.
In the last 5 years we have had a proliferation of all kinds of formats and the market place has shown us that people want a simple solution - a DVD drive (whether stand alone or computer) that accepts all formats - and one that accepts not only movies, but also computer files, pictures, song files, etc. Go into J&R and check out the stacked boxes of DVD players, you'll see what I mean. They'll play anything you throw at them. And why not? I sure as h--- wouldn't buy one if it didn't. Would you?
I believe that this notion of a "winner" of the HD format war is one that has been promoted by backers of both formats. It's propaganda. In fact, if we look at history and the market place, co-existence is a much more common phenomenon (but one that neither Blu-Ray nor Toshiba like!) than a dominating format.
I'll be waiting to buy my next gen DVD player when a reasonably priced dual format player comes out - then I won't care who wins this silly war.