I am pretty certain I will go with VHS over Beta. But I'll hold out just a little longer to be certain I am making the right decision.

Leslie, I would love to know your source for the assertion that "music downloads killed off the CD". Did you author this post from the future? Here in 2008, I'm pretty sure the CD is still very much alive.

The format wars have been pretty funny. The funniest part is that a lot of the public was duped into thinking it was only between 2 formats and 2 companies. Sony and Toshiba did a great job to get people to forget that the next format is actually streaming media through satellite, CableTV, and gaming consoles. Sony needed a win because their PS/3 sales were in the crapper (well, and because they lost the first format war). But, the future is online rental and purchasing of digital hi-def movies -- not some costly media.

Ford -vs chevy, X-box -vs- PS3 all co-exist. HD DVD and Blu-ray should have done the same. Be muniplulated by Sony, Warner, Best-buy, Netflix and the others has forced me to not buy from them. I already own 700 dvd's. Don't think you studios should have stopped releasing HD DVD's. I was up to 70ea. Your loss is my gain. America is based on freedom of choose. I hate to think my only choose would be driving a Chevy.

Blue-ray who? In no time we'll be saying the same thing about cable. The net, digital streaming, downloads and such are all making way for an on-demand world. No more schedules to worry about just the irritation of watching a manditory commercial at the beginning. If we're lucky it will follow the cable on-demand function where you may not be able to skip it but atleast you can fast forward. The disc is dead!

I'm tired of hearing how downloading will kill the HD market. For one simple reason: to get true 1080p res, you need Blu-Ray. Why? Because broadband isn't fast enough to handle the huge download required to get the same content. I mean hell, a standard episode of TV, at 720p, is a little over a Gig. Doable, but kick it up to a movie at 1080p for my 50" Sony... and nah, I don't feel like decided what I want to watch 6+ hours before I can actually watch it. And so far, the streaming technology hasn't impressed me for standard resolution videos, I dont' want to think about it for HD.

I have purchased both HD DVD & BR players as soon as both launched onto the market. The safe finacial bet of course was to sit out the format war altogther but who's really missing out me or you? I've have been enjoying high definition movies for 2 years now and guess what, the HD DVD player and movies still work! Another thing you may want to notice, HD DVD is still selling at the top of retailers, it is still the #1 selling player on Amazon. My loss, isnt the player not working its the losing of the superior menu systems, interactivity, PIP, web enabled features, combo discs and cheaper prices exclusive to HD DVD over Blu-ray.

like i said before and you now also mentioned that dvd and cd sails are dropping for years.

whel i see no need for the format.
i'm already mad and frustrated withe the industrie that the cd is stil out there and is artificaly beeing cept alive...

for me disk formats are obsolte , i have a 800 euro toutscreen phone that can do anything from phone to play dvd's

only ff thing is that i have to convert musick and film from analog format to a format that fits my mashine.

something that takes a lot of time , and something that the industrie frouns upon...

for instance i find it stupide that if i buy a cd nowdays, yes buy.... that it's not burned withe an mp3 format insted of a wave file !!!

we ar so far in the future now , many have player that even play mp3 files in cd players , but many like me just play musick or film on there portable divices....

so the cd is nothing more then an antiquated backup device like the floppy disk was once !!

i hate it !! , we made years of progres and info can be squezed onto smaler and smaler spaces , and yet the industrie that makes al those advaces is somhow stuk withe the idea that cd is stil a hot thing !!! WAKE UP and smel the rozes !!!

i'm alos offended by the industrie that i legely own a cd , but they think it's somhow illigal to change it into a format i like !!

if you do'nt want us to do that , then give us the format we want , you invented it !!! :-S GRRRRR

maby then we wil start buying more.....
so far it's not conviniant to buy anything and then have to spend time converting it.....
nore is the pace...i do'nt like a room ful of cd's just to prove i bought a legal coppy....

nore do i like when i do splash my cash on a "legal"version of a movie i get pre movie shit like "dvd coping is a crime" YES I KNOW THATS WHY I BOUGHT THE ORIGINAL !!! put that shit on pirate copies !!!!

stuf like that stops the good guis from buying stuf... whel it stops me.

and whel i say that we need musick and movies in a digital format !!

have download sites like we have now.

and some on smal to ultra smal memorry cards for the people who ca'nt download somhow.

or that you can go to a shop , say what you want ea movie / musick , then they put that on your own portable device / memory card via the computer in the shop.

we can even have automated vending mashine like things withe pin card swipes etc.... so you do'nt even need a human , you just prelisten / view , then pick and store....

same as we have goten to know withe digital photograps !!!

i do'nt see the logic why it's not already here !!

part from some stukup bigwigs that are afrade of piracy.... who by not dooing as i described are making it worse and driving the whole thing underground and in "illigalety"

GET A LIFE !!

sometimes i think is it mee ??
am i that progressive ??
or am i just living in the future ??

anyway i think that they might as whel bite the bullet , they stalled long enouthe... and now there is no way back....

and if they are smart like some companies they wil make money out of it....

but it's frustrating to have 1 thing and not another , it's not logical !!! and it's counterproductive !!!! and also inviromantaly unfriendly !!! but i gues you amaricans are good at that !!! GRRRRRR

it's strange when we are in an age where mvies can be downloaded , and tv's are becouming the sizes as shown to us in films like "back to the future" and we stil have the stupide cd !!

KILL IT ALREADT !!!

An on demand world is 10 years away minimum. Most Countries don't have the infrastructure to implement it for a start. Current on demand channels are expensive and inferior in quality of picture and especially sound.

The younger generation may be quicker to embace it but most of the market are simply not ready to make that sort of shift, they don't want to loose something they can touch for something that is on someones server somewhere. Not to mention how it will kill several high-street chains and cost thousands of jobs. It's a nice idea, but it's a long way off.

Blu-ray will co-exist with downloads for a long time to come, if downloads take off it won't be worth launching a new format for a niche market. Also with the potential to increase to 400GB per disc, there's plenty of room for Blu-ray to evolve.

As for competition between two formats it's a very very bad reason, for exactly the reason you say - it stops people adopting the technology. Competition comes from the movie studios, it comes from all the different Blu-ray player manufacturers.

Price reductions come from the economies of scale, and economies of scale comes from widespread adoption...

If you want to go Blu-ray - wait until next year, or wait for the new 2.0 Sony players in a few months though they aren't exactly cheap, or do as most people and get a PS3... look how many people had the PS2 for their first DVD player after all.

Thank God,

I don't own either HD DVD or Blu Ray.. its good, the format war is over, so that I can decide what to buy .. perhaps i will wait for 10 more years.. to see if a format other than these two enter the arena... to resume the format war :)

I have listed 5 things all new laptops will have In 2010:

http://smart-parts.net/blog/?p=205

One of them is flash memory replacing CDs, including Blue-ray. Do you think CDs have realistic possibility to withstand the drop in flash prices or will they end up in a museum in 2-3 years?

Really? You really think this format war ending affects Microsoft at all? They only had a stake in HD-DVD to fight Sony and Blu Ray. The add-on for the 360 was just a cheap HD-DVD drive add-on and didnt do anything for the gamer's out there. Perhaps if MS had integrated the HD-DVD player into their hardware from the beginning this would be a big deal.

Perhaps you should research the topic a bit more before writing the article. To be honest you didn't really add anything to the discussion.

I heard that BluRay disc manufacturers have come up with a slick idea to ward off the digital downloads. Many new Blu discs will come with a separate DVD that is downloadable on to your computer and from their to your iPod, or media player of choice. I imagine that less than 50% of the US has access to hi speed downloads. It will be faster to buy your movie and install it on your PC than waiting for a 4 hour download.

If anything will replace DVDs, it will be things like PPV on satellite/cable. I can purchase a HD PPV for $5. Cheaper than driving to my local blockbuster (gas!) to rent an SD movie. Also, I can get multiple movie channels in HD for about $30/month. That's only 6 movies. Having a DVR with associated hard drive means I can record A LOT of HD movies.

We haven't been to blockbuster in a long time nor have we purchased a DVD (except as Xmas presents).

Will I get a Blu player? Probably. But I'm in no hurry. We'll have to wait on manufacturers competetitions to drop prices rather than format competition.

Had to happen at some point though it's a shame since we, the consumers were reaping the benefits of the battle. I have the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox360 and to be honest, have only watched one HD-DVD on it. The upconvert is pretty good for normal DVD's so for the most part I'm content with standard DVDs. When we want to watch a movie in HD we either get it through FIOS PPV or I download it from xbox live which surprisingly doesn't take very long to start the movie since it continues to download while you're watching it.

I'll most likely buy some HD-DVDs when they begin appearing in the bargain bin. Pretty much all of my favorites were released on HD-DVD prior to it's demise. The unit should be good for a couple of years by which time the computer software/hardware should be out to encode them onto the central home server which is where all our music and some older movies is stored anyway. (really love not having video's, CDs or DVD cluttering up the place)

One comment about the XBox versus PS3 thing. I have the 360, friends have the PS3. Both great graphics and sound but where Microsoft was clever and released a full developer pack Sony didn't bother. This meant game developers had to write their own which slowed initial development for the Sony box. Also, Microsoft is expected to have the blu-ray addon for the Xbox by May as it was already in development.

What struck me as weird about the whole Blu-Ray Verus HD-DVD was how people took sides and really becmae emotional about their particular choice. Blue-ray and HD both used blue light, both had multi layering capability. Blu-Ray had greater capacity at the cost of a narrower beam laser and thinner protective coating but that made not one scrap of difference since movies generally took less space than either format offered.

Downloading is 15-20 years away if it will ever happen at all. Not everyone owns a computer people! DVD and CD will continue to be a viable format for some time, as there are some of us who care about the QUALITY of what we see and hear.
MP3 is the new 8-track. Plus, I know I love to hold a physical object in my mitts! I love prying open a new DVD.

I agree with what other people are saying about downloads killing off media. Granted right now(in the US) it does take a long time to download large movie files but in countries like Korea where their broadbands speeds are insane its not unrealistic. Besides...I have a netflix accound. I'm happy to wait 2-3days to get a movie, I could just as easily wait for a large movie to download...if fact I do. If you use clients like bittorrent to download movies off the net...I know piracy is bad...sometimes depeding on the size it can take almost a week or two (48++ episdoes of full metal alchemist) but hey once you have it you have it and you can watch it all you want.
What i do think will always be needed is a media for people to store their crap somewhere other than their HD...at least I do mine are all full...

BackstJoe. Downloads are here now, it just needs the supporting infrastructure to continue to roll out across the country, 15 or 20 years in technology is like dog years. You say everyone doesn't own a computer, yet even your DVD player is really a computer albeit with an OS and hardware optimized for playing the particular supported mediums and formats. You said 'There are some who care about the quality of what we see or hear' yet there is no difference between a download of an MPEG-2 encoded HD movie and the same HD movie stored on a Blu-Ray disk, though in reality most download movies are delivered in 720p but there are some available encoded for 1080p
You say MP3 is the new eight track but it all depends on the sampling rate, the higher the sampling rate, the better the quality of the sound. I would challenge any audiophile to blind test a VBR 256k or 320k sampled mp3 against the standard 16 bit PCM encoded format of a CD even with expensive stereo equipment. The beauty of mp3 and all the rest of the digital formats is that people can encode for whatever fits their lifestyle and storage capacity best.

As for holding the physical object, all you're really holding is the storage medium and it's case but again, if you enjoy collecting movies and the associated extra content and documents the physical DVD is still the best way to build a collection.

kghare "I would challenge any audiophile to blind test a VBR 256k or 320k sampled mp3 against the standard 16 bit PCM encoded format of a CD even with expensive stereo equipment."

Well, I have blind tested non-audiophiles, and even they can tell the difference between a 320k MP3 and a CD. There is a world of difference. Not to say I don't enjoy carrying around a few 1000 songs, but at home I would never listen to an MP3.

The only way downloaded movies will ever be mainstream is if it works like the "on demand" system works. And while I love on demand, it barely works, especially during peak viewing hours.

Back around 1990 there was discussion about converting to HDTV, and I said it's 20 years away. Look where we are now...trust me, hard media will be around for quite awhile.

With BluRay winning the battle, we just gave Sony a chance to manipulate the optical disc market. I'm a bit discouraged with those big companies supporting BluRay just because they hate Microsoft and Microsoft supports HDDVD. HDDVD should be the new media for all because of its low price and quality. A battle was won but who will really benefit?

DVD.TV

Interesting you have friends who have blind tested the audio of a well sampled mp3 and said they totally hear the difference between VARIABLE BIT RATE MP3 sampled at 320k and the PCM-16 encoded CD track.

PCM-16 Samples at 44Khz 16 bit
MP3 can sample at 96k with a 24 bit word

VBR can vary the sampling rate depending on the needed frequency at that particular point, of course, it depends on how good your sampler is and if you want to run a test I suggest you download RAZORLAME, encode one of your good CDs at both 256k and 320k then blind test it with your friends again. If nothing else it will give you something fun to do, especially if you mix in a few good beers. Just remember that the output hardware needs to be the same, don't just plug in your mp3 player and compare it against a high end CD player, of course there's going to be a difference if the hardware is different. You could try playing the mp3 on your CD player, most play mp3 these days. Create a wav file from the original source and name it example-1. Now encode your same audio as a VBR MP3 at the 320k to start. Convert that back to WAV as example-2. Now you have two wave files one from the direct source and one converted to mp3 then to wave.

Most of all, have fun.

On the subject of download. So far it works for me as does ppv. in fact, it now comes down to which is offering the movie and which is the best cost. Yes they talked about HD 20 years ago, they talked about a lot of stuff 20 years ago and some stuff they didn't, like the web for example, or flash memory, digital cameras, DVDs.

However HD was nothing more than a concept then, movie download is here, now and some people are using it.

Well, that's it, this is not meant to be a putdown or mean spirited but the myth that mp3 cannot be as good as a CD is just plain wrong and it's been proved multiple times by test after test. Some people will insist without actually testing because they've heard bad mp3 encoding and taken that as their one example.

Apologies that this post is off track.

I guess it was good foresight by Microsoft to not include a HD DVD drive in their Xbox 360. Imagine if the war had gone the other way and thousands of PS3 buyers were stuck with paying for obsolete technology.

Less competition will mean higher prices.

When you watch DVD on a real big screen, you quicly see it's limitations, so I wnet out and bought the onlyviable BR player I could find: a PS3. So yes I now own a game console to play movies ... Next to a tuned machine designed to play movies.

The biggest losers are outside of the north america (region1): since HD DVD was to do away with the moronic "region encoding", we'll now be stuck with that again for many years to come.

So I'll keep my (region free) Toshiba HD DVD to play my collection of region encoded DVDs for. It's overpriced for that, but it plays them better than my old DVD player anyway.
I doubt there are decent hacks to make a BR player region free for an affordable price out there.

Still HD DVD might not be fully dead: the porn industry hasn't chosen yet (and rumors have it Sony isn't allowing them to use BR). Remember their vote cast the winning vote towards VHS over the other competing choices at the time.

Too late:
I strongly doubt that many PS3 owners bought it to play BR movies on. I think most won;t buy movies in the end and the movie studios got suckered in to choose for BR for other reasons (region encoding might be well the culprit one)

I'm glad I didn't fall for either one of them. Not owning an HD-DVD or BlueRay player, I feel like I don't have anything to complain about, but mind my words, this ain't the end. There will be another form of debauchery in our future, where the corporate know-alls will dupe us into spending our hard earned cash for some gizmo or gadget that will be touted as the "Last Format Ever Needed!"

I have to say I'm baffled by all of you who think downloads will take over so quickly. While I agree the younger computer savvy generation may lean that way, there are other demographics who will not. Personally I like having a hard copy sitting on a shelf. I can take it to a friends house, and if my hard drive dies my movie collection doesn't die with it. I like the freedom that hard disk media gives me. I don't want my movies stored on some companies servers, and I don't want them all on my PC's hard drive. The optical disk provides instant gratification, can go anywhere I go, and is a fairly stable media. I can't see downloads taking over until they are on equal ground, and that has got to be at least 10+ years off.

HI THERE THE BIGEST LOSERS ARE THE GAMERS THAT WANT THERE NEW GAMING CONSOLES AND COMPUTERS TOO HAVE SOLIDE STATE FLASH DRIVES VERSES THE ULTRA SLOW POKY HARD DRIVES WHEN WILL GAMES GET FASTER SOLIDE STATE OR THE NEW 20,000 RPM HARD DRIVE WE WANT FASTER DRIVES FOR GAMING.