Hi-def dvd's

[Caspian]

I've been trying to keep up with the format wars between Sony and Toshiba and according to The Digital Bits it seems we're getting screwed over into having to deal with two formats which in turn means either two different dvd players (and roms dvd-r's etc) or paying twice as much for one that can read and use both formats.
I'm mainly just posting this here for anyone else that might be interested, seeing how its going to really screw with any new consoles, pc's, and movies in the future. I guess it goes to show that even "well to do" ceo's occasionally like to whip it out and see who's is bigger. I'm pretty upset about what all this is going to mean and am curious if anyone else feels the same.

[Macht]

Nothing new, I'm a little surprised you just found this out though. Even the US government has been working on this with so many different standards for storage and all the media crossing over to each now (games, audio, and video on DVDs, cartriged, Minidiscs, Memory Sticks, SDs, Compact Flash, and UMDs as resent) that having HD-DVDs and Blu Ray isn't such a surprise now either.

This whole thing will probably rear up again when the Holographic DVDs are ready to be released, and again when the next media storage types are released. It's just another classic case of technology outrunning everything else.

However technology wise it seems the Blu-Ray has more going into it then the HD DVDs do.

[Caspian]

I've been watching this one for a cpl months, I remember most of them (minidiscs werent those supposed to be huge...along with laserdiscs?). Its just this is the first time I've really cared a whole lot. Yeah, bluray is superior in most ways, they were at one point thinking of using bluray's format and writing them with the hd-dvd software. Toshiba was all excited about a 40gb disc and two days later sony announced a 100gb disc. It just irks me, both so desperately want royalties from the format that noone will budge. My guess is that bluray (with greater storage capabilities and more backing from 3rd parties) will eventually win but I'm sure it will take atleast a year or two before Toshiba's backers realize they're losing and change allegiances. Oh well, here's hoping.