WHile I agree that Toshiba could have fought the war with more smarts, I don't agree with characterizing Sony as playing dirty. Toshiba's strategy was to win based on hardware costs. Sony's was to win based on content. Why does everybody flock to YouTube? Because it's cheaper than it's rivals? No, becuase it has better content. Price usually gives you and advantage, but when prices start to even out, content always wins.

Sony didn't play dirty. Toshiba played stupid.

Price was a major factor on both sides. The frequent BD BOGOs helped create the perception of high demand for BD. It sucks that Warner didn't wait until after Q1 to see the effect of player sales.

I agree with this. I really wish this whole "war" had been one of hardware, quality of software and price .... and not the studios. If ALL of the studios had published in both formats then we could have had a legitimate battle where the winner would be determined by traditional market forces of supply/demand based upon price and what is percieved to be the superior technology.

Instead, studios had way too big of an impact on the outcome. The consumers should have been left to decide (and Warner itself made this case prior to going Blu).

Actually I'd say Sony won the war for one reason, the Playstation 3. It wasn't content and it wasn't hardware costs. But once the PS3 was released, sales went from 2:1 HD DVD to 2:1 Blu Ray overnight. And no amount of standalone sales could match the amount of PS3 players out there. The only thing Toshiba could have done to fight that was to have a built in HD DVD on the XBox. But that shipped saled whent he XBox was released sans HD DVD drive.

True, but maybe Microsoft was smart to take that year's head start and steal the video game market from Sony.

Oh, I agree. It's not really in Microsoft's interest to back HD DVD (at additional costs) when there's a huge gaming division out there to be won. It's just that Toshiba didn't really do anything wrong other than not own a gaming division. And as an aside, Sony may have won the HDM format war, but it has hurt them in the gaming world. And I'm sure Microsoft loves that, particularly after the PS2 dominated them.

True, I think if MS made the 360 Elite with a built in HD-DVD drive, than the sales would have been much closer.

Sony played dirty because they were able to bamboozle the movie studios into signing on to Blu-ray based on the lie that the PS2 made the DVD format a success and the fallacious assumption that because over 100 million PS2s were sold, the PS3 was a slamdunk. They Sony burned the studios by pricing the thing at $600 and having no notable titles after a year on the market while the 360 piled up the must-have games.

But Sony had time and patience to suffer billions in losses because the end result was that if they won the war, they'd reap a fortune in royalties from ALL HDM publishers as well as selling a ton of PS3s to people who figure for $400, why not get the twofer. If Sony hadn't been able to sell the lie to the studios in 2005, we wouldn't be looking at this debacle now.

Today is exactly two weeks after Christmas and thanks to Warners' nasty backstab, everyone who decided to buy into HDM just got a pricey doorstop for their trouble. Do they honestly think that all these people are going to just trot their orphaned Toshiba players back to the stores and buy a $400-$500 alternative players and replace their libraries. Or will they just say "ShaqFu this!" and wait until the prices are the same as SD?

No, but those (relatively) few people are a drop in the bucket compared to the orders of magnitude more that will buy their first hi-def player in the coming years.

Early adopters never, ever, ever matter in the success of a new technology.

That's an odd view. The people who you depend on to blaze the trail for a new format don't matter?

Not the ones that are going to take their ball home over a $99 player at least.

No, it's reality. Early adopters buy early hardware that isn't refined. Think of them as beta testers. They are enthusiasts. A very small minority of ultimate purchasers.

They don't matter. More specifically - you and I don't matter. So, just enjoy it for what it is. No need for us to get too worked up about it.

That's why I always laugh when someone says they want to buy a "future-proof" receiver, dvd player, tv, etc. There's no such thing. If there were, that would mean nothing new is coming out.

That's also why I bought the absolute cheapest HD-DVD I could get that also met my needs - a refurbed XA1. No need to splash for the XA2 or the A35. Way too much money for marginal improvement, with a lot more added financial risk.
And then 3 weeks ago an open box BDP1000 for $129. At these prices, I have so little invested that I don't care if BR or HD-DVD get supplanted by something else.

Nope. If they mattered, then DVD-A, SACD and every other format on the scrap heap would've been a success.

J6P always make or break a format. Don't think for a moment that BD has actually won the HDM "war". For all we know BD will still flop.

I was talking about hardware cost, not media. Sorry for not making that more clear.

You're right! Those dirty f*ckers at Sony are total assholes for convincing all the gaming companies to hold off on releasing decent PS3 titles just to screw with those other brain-dead companies!!

What color is the sky in your angry dream-world?

I don't think Sony bamboozled anyone, but I do think the whole industry(as well as a lot of non-industry types like myself) thought that PS3 would have been a much bigger hit than it has been. Had PS3 com out the gate blazing as expected, then this "war" would not have lasted so long. Even hobbled, HD DVD couldn't tip BD over, though they were very close to doing just that within the first few months.

Actually, the PS2 is still dominating the XBox and Xbox 360 in total hardware and software sales.

Glad I got my 360 HD DVD player at Costco!

I agree with you on Sony and Toshiba. I don't on YouTube. It was because it was free content that made it big. I don't think many would have gone to it if it was a pay service.

Probably right. Yet, I can't help think that maybe the fact PS3 did less than stellar in gaming forced Sony to take the different push for HD. Maybe if PD3 went big guns in games, Sony wouldn't have been so hungry to take over the HD market.

Well VHS had LD. While LD was better quality and had extra features (trailers, alternate audio tracks, and more), VHS still stayed around due to price of the players and the availability.

Now we have DVD and Blu-Ray. For Blu-Ray not to end up like LD, the players must cost less and the titles need to come flying out with extras that cannot be done on DVD.

I don't think it'll ever happen... I think we'll just have 2 formats like it was in the 80s & 90s.

I agree, but I will say that there would be nothing at all worng with BD becoming an enthusiast format to DVD's mass-market format, just as LD was to VHS. BD does not need to conquer the universe to be a good product.

Nothing at all to you. But I don't think Sony and the studios are going to be excited if their annointed successor to DVD doesn't have much more impact than LD. A lot of money was spent on this war, and if they don't take over a decent chunk of the market, and grow sales with HD, then I don't know how likely we are to see a lot of releases compared to SD.

I agree. With this structure, the studios will be able to make money from the J6P in DVD and collect premiums from the more affluent HDTV-owner-enthusiasts in BR. Win-win situation for the studios.

Agreed. I was speaking from a consumer standpoint. LD, while not as proliferated as DVD, was a format that made many consumers happy.