Looks Like The Format War Is Over…

ACCORDING TO VARIOUS news sources today it looks like the most recent format war, between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is finally over. Or at least it’s about to enter the final stages where the main combatants have agreed who won and everyone else will either give up or just gradually fade away.

The winner this time around looks like Sony’s Blu-Ray technology, and the victory must be very sweet for Sony since they lost the last great format war over 30 years ago to JVC. Back then the competition was between video tape formats Betamax (from Sony) and VHS (from JVC). I remember trying to sell both varients to customers back in the day and I wasn’t exactly surprised that VHS tapes won out in the end.

I must admit though that this time around I did suspect that the HD-DVD format was going to take the spoils, but recent announcements from Netflix and Warner coming out in support of Blu-Ray seemed to set the scene for the demise of HD-DVD, and today the rumours are flying that Toshiba, until now the number one backer of the HD-DVD format, is about to announce it’s switch to Blu-Ray. Even worse, an insider blogger at Wal-Mart has let slip that they are also about to switch over to the same format and then it was confirmed on Friday to be true.

So basically the format war looks like it’s pretty much over. Blu-Ray is the winner and in a year or two most people won’t even remember HD-DVD. Let’s just hope the price of Blu-Ray players starts to drop as a result.