…or is it? With the recent overthrow of Toshiba’s HD-DVD format by Blue-ray the onlooking tech community lets out a collective sigh of relief and the fear of another iteration of the 10-year war of Beta vs. VHS finally dissipates into the ether. Of course consumers still had to endure two years waiting on the sidelines to see which titan would emerge victorious, a hesitation that killed any momentum physical distribution HD had with the general public.
There is a challenger to Blue-ray’s hard won grip on the HD market, one that has been steadily building a power base as the battle raged overhead — Digital distribution. Six months after the first salvo was fired with the unveiling of HD-DVD Microsoft’s Xbox 360 launched it’s video marketplace which offered 200 hours of high definition content for download and has since expanded to include television and movie content from MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Turner Broadcasting, CBS, Warner Bros, Paramount, and Disney. Apple is making inroads into the market with Apple TV and Netflix is rolling out its HDTV Set-Top Box in 2008; all bypassing the passé disks and bringing the media directly to the consumer’s TV.
Mark Whittard, general manager for Toshiba Australia, commented in a press release yesterday morning
We believe technology developments will soon leapfrog high definition discs, whether it be HD DVD or Blue-ray… This step is going to be leapfrogged by the next major format – digital content, Internet downloads and video on demand.
It seems that the victory of the Blue-ray consortium may be short lived, particularly with companies like Microsoft and Apple throwing their clout behind the side of digital distribution.
The Format War is over…
…or is it? With the recent overthrow of Toshiba’s HD-DVD format by Blue-ray the onlooking tech community lets out a collective sigh of relief and the fear of another iteration of the 10-year war of Beta vs. VHS finally dissipates into the ether. Of course consumers still had to endure two years waiting on the sidelines to see which titan would emerge victorious, a hesitation that killed any momentum physical distribution HD had with the general public.
There is a challenger to Blue-ray’s hard won grip on the HD market, one that has been steadily building a power base as the battle raged overhead — Digital distribution. Six months after the first salvo was fired with the unveiling of HD-DVD Microsoft’s Xbox 360 launched it’s video marketplace which offered 200 hours of high definition content for download and has since expanded to include television and movie content from MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Turner Broadcasting, CBS, Warner Bros, Paramount, and Disney. Apple is making inroads into the market with Apple TV and Netflix is rolling out its HDTV Set-Top Box in 2008; all bypassing the passé disks and bringing the media directly to the consumer’s TV.
Mark Whittard, general manager for Toshiba Australia, commented in a press release yesterday morning
It seems that the victory of the Blue-ray consortium may be short lived, particularly with companies like Microsoft and Apple throwing their clout behind the side of digital distribution.
[Via Couriermail]
~ by Zack on February 21, 2008.
Posted in HD Media, Tech Commentary
Tags: Blue-ray, corporate stupidity, digital distribution, format wars, HD, HD-DVD, Sony, Toshiba