HD-DVD v. Blu Ray: Who Fricking Cares?!

Ted posted something awhile back about the format war for high-definition DVDs between HD-DVD and Blu Ray. So if you want the skinny, go read that post because I'm not going to reiterate the details here. Today I'm going to explain my theory about this impending "war" that all the techie and a/v experts are talking about. What I'm going to say is this: there is no format "war" and neither format is going anywhere.


Back in the day there was a true format battle for your VCR pitting Beta (Sony) v. VHS (everyone else). This was a legitimate problem because there was a basic incompatibility between Beta and VHS. Beta tapes, although superior in both audio and video, were about three times the size of VHS tapes. It was like putting a box of cereal into your VCR. You know what the difference is between HD-DVD and Blu Ray? The pit size - which translates to Blu Ray having greater capacity. In other words, they are pretty much identical. The average viewer won't be able to tell the difference between the two. So while a winner was necessary between Beta and VHS because a dual-format player would be the size of a washing machine, such is not the case with HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Just like you can buy a DVD player that also plays CDs, to make a component capable of playing both formats would be trivial. Maybe a bit of a premium on the price tag but that will eventually come down as the formats mature and more people accept the HD revolution.

So while all the major movie studios jump ship between formats and Microsoft lines up with HD-DVD and techno-geeks say the apocalypse is nigh, just forget about it. Because the only thing for certain is that there is no consensus right now, and unless one of the two takes a major shit once released later this year both are here to stay.