electronista
11/21/2007, 3:05pm, EST
Wednesday, November 21stSony CEO: Blu-Ray will win, eventually
Reacting to observations on his comments that the HD war is in a "stalemate," Sony CEO Howard Stinger now insists that Blu-Ray will ultimately win. The format has the "the momentum and the scale" needed, Stringer says, particularly because it has the exclusive support of movie studios such as Disney, Fox, MGM and Lionsgate. Warner Brothers releases in both Blu-Ray and HD DVD, while only Universal and Paramount have stuck to HD DVD.
Stringer further says that Blu-Ray is "just a better format," not only because it can hold up to 50GB versus HD DVD's 30GB, but because it has tighter security measures that studios may be attracted to. On the subject of quality, Stringer notes that even Steven Spielberg has insisted that his movies stay on Blu-Ray. "It isn't the cheaper format, but it is the better format," Stringer observes.
Also argued is that with new, cheaper PlayStation 3s, such as the $399 40GB model, it is building an expanded base of Blu-Ray players that will only burgeon during the Christmas season. In the two weeks leading up to November 11th alone, Stringer says, over 100,000 PS3s were sold. [via The Hollywood Reporter]
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Sony projects that never got mass market appeal...
Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) BetaMax Digital Audio Tape (DAT) Digital-8 eBook High capacity Floppy Disk (HiFD) High capacity Mini-Disc (HiMD) Memory Stick MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD) MicroMV Mini-Disk (MD) Mini-Disc Long Play (MDLP) Music Clip NetMD Professional Disc for Data (PPD) Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) Super Audio CD (SACD) Universal Media Disc (UMD)
Sony projects that were abandoned Aibo Clie Copy-Protect CDs Direct Digital Stream DVD-RAM Pen Tablets
Sony success... telling Apple to use 3.5" Floppy on their Macintosh.
They may not have a winning track record but one of these days that ant will move another rubber tree plant.
Blu-ray and HD DVD both support MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1 video codecs, which are the actual basis for picture quality. The discs themselves are simply data storage, containers.
Yes, there is some variation to how the containers work, but bits are bits. The same video data bits come out of a VC-1 encoded video file, irrespective of if it is stored on Blu-ray or HD DVD.
This is what early adopters arguing for the superiority of one side or the other don’t seem to get.
There never should have been a format war but for greed driving the split over who owned what intellectual property rights for the container.
And the container has no bearing on the consumer experience.