New Technology TV

The much hyped format war between Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD-DVD high definition digital video disc formats is all about which format can make itself most appealing to consumers. Unfortunately both formats have been a tough sell to consumers because so far it hasn't been clear which one will come out on top on the format war. It's generally agreed that only one format will come out on top, and with memories of the format war between Beta-max and VHS video tapes only about two decades old, many consumers are afraid of getting burned by investing in technology that will soon be obsolete. This is the central dilemma to both Sony and Toshiba: how to evoke enough confidence in their format to convince consumers that it will be around in the long run. Because of this problem, the format question is really a matter of perception. If consumers perceive one format to be more likely to be around five years from now, they'll buy movie and software titles in that format. Then, once movie studios and software companies see that consumers like that format, they'll publish more titles in that format. When consumers see more a lot more titles in one format than the other, they'll have even more confidence in that format and the format war will be won.

Now, Twentieth Century Fox- which backs the Blu-ray format- is skipping ahead a few steps with the announcement that it will release numerous movie titles in the Blu-ray format over the next year. With five to ten titles expected to be released every month, this is a major show of confidence in Blu-ray's potential to be the winning format. The hope is that this steady stream of new titles will provide anyone who buys a Blu-ray player or who already owns one with plenty of new movies to look forward to over the next year. This commitment on the part of Twentieth Century Fox may give a lot of consumers the confidence in the Blu-ray format that they need to go ahead and invest in a Blu-ray player. Once that happens, word of mouth advertising is sure to help the format gain even more momentum.

This is also good news for TV and computer technology in general because of the technical advantages that Blu-ray has over the HD-DVD format. The main benefit comes from the fact that even though they're the same size and rely on similar types of laser technology, a Blu-ray disc can store up to twenty five gigabytes of data on each side for a total of fifty gigabytes while HD-DVD discs can only store fifteen gigabytes on each side for a total of only thirty gigabytes. From the standpoint of playing movies in high definition, those extra gigabytes of capacity mean more freedom to include bonus features. From the standpoint of computer technology, those are twenty extra gigabytes of storage capacity for archiving and backing up data. From a purely technological point of view, it seems clear that Blu-ray should be the winner because, it's the format that would have replaced HD-DVD at some point in the future anyway. Unfortunately, decisions that are made in the marketplace aren't always in favor of the superior technology.