New Technology TV

As the holidays approach, the format war between Sony's Blu-ray high definition digital video disk format and the rival HD-DVD format made by Toshiba, is heating up. Both sides are hoping to take advantage of the twin desires of American shoppers to give the best gifts and to get the best deals during the holidays. To this end, both Toshiba and Sony are each pushing their own pet products which they hope will tip the scales in their favor. Of course in order to understand this situation, some background information is in order. Both Toshiba's HD-DVD format and Sony's Blu-ray format are next generation technologies that are designed as storage media for high definition video content. Both types of discs have the same size and overall appearance as normal DVD's and compact discs. They're able to store the large amount of data needed for full length high definition movies by using blue laser technology which is able to encode data onto a disc more finely than the red lasers used by older technologies. Though both use similar technologies to encode and read the data, there are subtle differences (which probably aren't so subtle to the engineers who work with these things) that prevent one type of player from reading discs produced in the rival format. It's generally agreed, both in the industry and among consumers, that only one of these formats will emerge from this format war and that the survivor will be the dominant format for publishing software and high definition television movie titles.

The trouble with this from the point of view of consumers is that they don't want to be left with the losing technology and at this point there's no way to predict which format will win out in the end. (If there was a way to predict that, the format war would be over!) It's kind of a catch twenty two for Sony and Toshiba as well as consumers. In order to become the dominant format, consumers have to start buying hardware and movie titles in one format or the other. Then whichever one seems to be the most popular will attract the most support from movie studios and software companies. Once the majority of software and movie titles a published and distributed in one format, that format will gain the confidence of consumers and there will be a clear winner. The problem is that the movie studios and software companies need the consumers to show confidence in one format over the other before they'll fully support that format as an industry, and the consumers need the software companies and movie studios to release the majority of titles in one format or the other before they'll have confidence in that format.

Both Toshiba and Sony, as well as other companies that are allied with each, are now attempting to rock the boat in favor of their formats by releasing attractive products for the holidays. Sony is hoping that its new Play Station 3 video gaming platform which can play movies off of Blu-ray discs will move the market in its favor, and Toshiba is hoping that Microsoft's Xbox 360 with its additional HD-DVD drive will do the same for the HD-DVD format. Both are also offering free movies on their own proprietary discs in order to encourage people that their formats are worth investing in. Only time will tell how any of this turns out.