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What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?

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Even if you don't care one bit - and this probably describes the vast majority of Americans - you have probably heard by now that a Great Format War has been fought, and apparently won. The HD-DVD format for DVDs, backed by Toshiba, has lost out to Sony's Blu-ray format. To be sure, there are some caveats. In this Computerworld article, for instance, Lucas Mearian writes that Blu-ray's victory may not be remotely as meaningful as it seems.
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freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
sak500 - contributor
Published: 659 days 10 hours ago | Article | Industry News
 
 

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resistance100 - 659 days 11 hours ago
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Simple really, they are the same lessions we learn't from the Betamax and VHS war
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HighDefinition - 659 days 11 hours ago
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1.1 - When it comes to gaming systems
Sony obviously knows what their doing, since this is the 2nd time they`ve made a mass difference in what will come out on top.
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damnwrx - 659 days 10 hours ago
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2 - Are you smarter than a 5th grader
This is a question?
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mikeslemonade - 659 days 9 hours ago
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2.1 -
If you did the research then you bought blu-ray, but if you're shortsighted then you bought HD-DVD.
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3 Blademask | 659 days 9 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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mighty_douche - 659 days 9 hours ago
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I guess not betting against a hardware juggernaut like Sony would be a good start.

But, more importantly. I hope the industry has learnt to not let this mess happen to the consumer again.
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scottie2521 - 659 days 9 hours ago
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if sony builds it into their system, game over
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meepmoopmeep - 659 days 9 hours ago
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i learned that it doesn't even help reducing your product to bargain basement prices to try and win.
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VirusE - 659 days 9 hours ago
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What Are the Lessons of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Battle?

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again and maybe after your proprietary formats fail over and over and over and over again you may get one to stick.
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sak500 - 659 days 9 hours ago
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7.1 -
LOL nice.. Betamax/umd/minidisc RIPs
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7.2 7h3ultim8p00 | 659 days 7 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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Armyless - 659 days 6 hours ago
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7.3 - Don't forget Laserdisc
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PimpHandStrong - 659 days 8 hours ago
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8 - The lesson toshiba learned
was to go ask Sony what there plans are for the future
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I Call 9MM - 659 days 8 hours ago
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Lesson learned: if your product is supposed to cost less, make sure it does. HD-DVD was touted as being cheaper to make discs then the blue-ray versions, yet they priced them the same. Had that been different, HD-DVD probably would have won. That was one of their biggest mistakes I think.
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9.1 7h3ultim8p00 | 659 days 7 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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Dragonopolis - 659 days 6 hours ago
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10 - What's with the don't care remark.. describes most Americans
there are a huge amount of Americans that cared about it. Lot of us held off purchasing for quite awhile because we were concerned about investing into either format with the risk of investing into the losing format. It is however, much better this time than it was when my father had to decide between Beta max and VHS. Beta max was clearly superior than VHS but the industry went with VHS. This time around it really didn't matter which format won quality was almost impossible to tell apart when watching but we wanted one format. Actually, America would have supported two formats if the movie industry did but of course they did not.

Now that there is a push toward one format you will see more adoption and less hesitation from Americans. It will still take a year to absorb into the minds of all Americans but yes to some extent Blu-ray victory is just that a victory not the end of the war. Blu-ray camp needs to now battle it out with the ole format and convince people all over the world that Blu-ray is better for HD than upscaled ole DVD.
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Rageanitus - 659 days 5 hours ago
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11 - simple
Think at both sides of the picture, manufacture and consumer side

1) will consumers demand hi def (yes)
2) is there enough money to made from a specific side (toshiba players were artificially cheap hence swaying away other manufcatures for making players)
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Tyrael - 659 days 4 hours ago
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I've learned that at the end of the day, no matter how costly for the developers, a great format war will always lead to a significant and quicker price cut for both sides, so that the consumers can enjoy the breakthrough technology at a sooner time. Sucks we had to wait for Blu-ray, but hey, at least it's a lot cheaper now eh?
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lsujester - 658 days 23 hours ago
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13 - Idiots
I've learned that these so-called "experts" have way too much faith in the present network capabilities. "Blu-ray victory is meaningless," they say, "Downloadable content is where it's at."

Yeah, DC is the future... when we all have multi-terabyte hard drives and networks that download at hundreds of MB per second. Until then, I'll buy discs, thank you very much.

I also have no desire to rent a video for a day, when i can go buy it at Wal-Mart for the rest of my life.
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level 360 - 658 days 20 hours ago
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Go with the one who offers the *Best possible feature.

So when it's time for another change you have a pretty much good *Benchmark to follow upon.

And this goes on and on...
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