Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war seems to have ended

Designers and consumers can now more confidently decide where to put their efforts and money.



The availability of competing formats has always created uncertainties for designers and consumers. While manufacturers irrevocably take one side or the other, designers and consumers are always in a state of confusion and uncertainty about where they should put in their efforts and money. The greatest format war in the recent times has been between Blu-ray and HD DVD for high-definition optical-disk formats. Blu-ray has been led by Sony, and HD DVD by Toshiba. With Warner, which puts out movies in both formats, recently announcing that from May 2008 it will stop publishing HD DVD and will entirely support Blu-ray, the format war is said to have come to an end in favor of Sony. While five major studios are now supporting Sony, only two are in the HD DVD camp—Universal and Paramount. The latter is on a time-limited contract basis. So it is anyone’s guess how long it will support HD DVD. Warner said its decision to drop HD DVD was based on consumers' preference for Blu-ray.

Designers seemed to be more comfortable with HD DVD than with Blu-ray. This was because HD DVD was evolutionary. It evolved from well established and technologically proven red-laser DVD technology, and red-laser DVD manufacturing facilities. Blu-ray was revolutionary. Revolutionary designs are often risky, with great risk of cost overruns and time delays from design through production.

Sony emphasized that the higher per layer capacity that Blu-ray offered meant less likelihood that content-rich console games would avoid more costly and complex multidisk configuration. Perhaps this was the factor that ultimately changed the scales in favor of Sony. Both the camps have spent a huge amount of money in design and technology development through manufacturing, and also in promotional campaigns. It remains to be seen how the two sides will try to recover the investments, if they ever.

Format uncertainty was the only one reason that consumers did not migrate to HD optical disks. Toshiba still claims that it is very much in the fray. It doled out statistics from market research firm NPD that HD DVD players represented 49.3 percent of the players for high-definition disks sold as of Dec. 22 last. However, experts predict that for all practical purposes the battle is over and has gone in favor of Sony. Designers can now well decide where there efforts should go.



Source: iSuppli