Ever since Warner Bros announced they were going exclusively Blu-Ray a little while ago, it has been the worst kept secret in the business. The HD format war between HD DVD and BLu-Ray was coming to an end. Then, rapid announcements about Walmart, Netflix and others exclusively supporting Blu-Ray made it only a matter of time. Well, the time has come.
Toshiba has announced they are raising the white flag. HD DVD is dead. Long live Blu-Ray. Yahoo gives us this:
“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices. Nishida said last month’s decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.
“That had tremendous impact,” he said. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”
So it’s done. It’s over. The question is… what happens now?
A few years ago market analysts were talking about how quickly HD technology would be adopted by the general population. But many of us scratched our heads at that theory knowing it was nonsense. They forgot how long it took people to finally really switch over to DVD from VHS. Not to mention, I have always contended that there were three factors that would prevent mass adoption by the market of this new HD technology:
1) The quality difference between HD and DVD is negligible when compared to the difference between VHS and DVD
2) Price
3) The format war causing a lot of apprehension for those people who remember the Beta vs VHS situation. Not many people wanted to buy a system that would be non-existent in 1 year, only being able to buy certain movies because half of them are only supported by the OTHER system and so on.
I have been one of those people refusing to adopt the new HD until these issues were settled… my Plasma TV with upscaled DVD over HDMI looks just fantastic thank you very much. But with this one issue now out of the way (the format war), I am now more tempted than ever to finally take that step… maybe.
You see, while there is now one less reason to NOT get an HD player… I’m still not convinced there are enough reasons TO get one yet. What is the up side? I currently have a system with fantastic image and sound that everything plays on, every movie out there is available for, and I don’t need to invest any more money into it. I’m still not convinced, or decided.
What about you folks? Now that the Format Civil War is over, are you now more inclined to get an HD system… or do you still not feel it’s the time?
