Game Over : Blu-ray it is
The much heated battle to win the tech war is over. And Sony saw to it, leaving no stone unturned in it’s favor, ensuring that they did not lose the war like they did some 30 years ago, when VHS won over Sony’s Betamax.
It’s officially over. Toshiba, who was fighting the HD disc war with it’s HD-DVD, has bowed out of the battle.
Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices.
The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.
The end was near when major retailer Walmart had announced that they would carry only Blu-ray in their stores. The announcement had come shortly after Warner Bros. made the sudden (and shocking switch) – shifting their camp from Toshiba’s HD-DVD to Sony’s Blu-ray a few weeks ago.
Big question though is – When is Bollywood going the Blu-ray way or does it even care a damn about it?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
gre8.. now i can get that blue ray drive
It’s good to see Sony winning a platform war. It’s actually a victory for better quality and a format with much greater potential for a longer life span. But if you really think about it, every new format that is released suffers a shorter life span. VHS was the most popular format for about 20 -25 years, whereas DVD was introduced in ‘96 and is already being replaced. DVD wil probably end up lasting just over half the time of VHS. With technology expanding and improving at faster and faster rates, I wonder if it will become more and more difficult to maintain a standard format for a good number of years in the future…
Saawariya would be the first Indian film to be released in blu-ray format. It is expected to release on March 11, 2008.
Source: http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movies.php?id=664
As much as I hate to say it, blu-ray shouldn’t see a price cut. If it did, the aspirational level would come down. that’s sad!!!
DUDE! Let it come down man…what aspirational levels are you talkin about..
yeah what aspirational levels are u talking about santhosh??!!!!!!!!!!!!
let the price go rock bottom!!!!
Avijit and DPac,
I don’t mean to sound elitist or arrogant here. But I feel so much has gone into the HD format research,companies have fought “battles” so to say. But Mssrs. Sony and co. would like to reap at least the initial benefits. So it should be a while before the costs of the players and the software itself could be expected to come down. But make no mistake the initial target audience is a Bose or some such thing owning one and the companies making the Blu-Rays will cater to them by giving them all goodies and giving them “good”. This comes at a price. Imagine “burnt” “copied” sub-standard Rs.50 Blu-Rays in grey markets! Would any cinephile like that? It is almost like a Merc that can’t be sold at a lakh. If the aam junta, that includes me, wants to enjoy great quality, then there is always the good old DVD. If only Blu-Ray were to be what they are projected to be, would we aspire for them and feel good owning some of the most unforgettable movie experiences on them
and I am sure the companies won’t do any justice to the low priced Blu-Rays if they were made more affordable. Then there would be multiple versions, editions, collectors’ pack and what not!!
@Santhosh..
!!! i dont know whether u have followed this battle out the last few years…
ur whole argument is lopsided…
both technologies have been there for a few years now.
it is not meant for an elitist clientile..
one of the main reason its (blu-ray or HD) not been cheap is cuz the market was split
people were waiting for a singular winner before they invested..
“”
elitist Bose?
I thought blu-rays were already being used in PS3… and the change is obvious… for a few years DVDs and Blu-rays will co-exist… choice being the individual’s.. after that blu-ray will become common place… and something else the ‘elitist’… comeon man… one should know better than to hold up technology or economy…
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/blu-ray-won-the-battle-but-now-comes-the-war/index.html?hp