I’m sure most of you have heard of the next generation of DVD’s coming known as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. If you’re wondering why they’re at two kinds then you’re not the only one. Once again we have another VHS vs. Betamax kinda battle going on between Toshiba (the developers behind HD-DVD) and Sony (the developers behind Blu-Ray) and once again the consumer is the one going to pay the price for this war in the end. It’ll be a while before we see a clear winner but I’m hoping the picture becomes a little more clear after this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas where we should see several new developments on both fronts of the war as well as developments on the third side of this war which is the dual-format media/player side. LG has stated that they will be offering a player soon that will play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media while Time Warner has announced plans for a new kind of high definition media known as “Total HD” that will include both the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray versions of a movie on one disc (at the cost of losing the SD or “standard definition” version of the film as most HD-DVD’s contain). Both of these new toys will be on display at CES and are expected to get a mixed reaction. On one hand, they somewhat solve the issue of which player to buy for the consumer but on the other hand we still have to competing formats supported by different studios. In other words folks, don’t let all this news of dual-format players/media being the “end of the war” between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sway you by any means!
By the way, I’m personally backing HD-DVD for two reasons: first, I got the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player for Christmas this year as I mentioned here previously, so I’m hoping this wasn’t a wasted gift seeing as how this could be useless in the future… and secondly, everything I’ve read and heard for the most part tells me that HD-DVD produces a better picture and it comes with the regular DVD version on the disc as well, which means I could still loan out my HD-DVD movies to people who want to borrow them but only have a regular DVD player. My brother-in-law though is backing Blu-Ray simply because he got a PS3 for Christmas and as a result started buying Blu-Ray movies since the PS3 comes with a Blu-Ray drive built in. I’m not sure which of us will end up kicking ourselves in the ass for choosing the wrong format, but I do know one thing and that’s who will end up deciding which format wins: the porn industry. Yep, you heard that right folks… porno for the win! If you didn’t know already, the whole reason VHS beat out Betamax (which was the far more superior technology honestly) was that the porn industry starting putting out their stuff on VHS. Porn is a multi-BILLION dollar business folks and that kinda money talks when it comes to sales. Most adult video producers are supporting both formats at the moment but at some point they’ll make the decision to go one way or the other and then it’s “game over” my friends for one of the two formats. Here’s hoping HD-DVD is born for porn!
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