Time To Buy a Blu-ray

[DRTYFN]

The Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battle is over!!!

Blu-ray to sting HD-DVD
AMERICA'S porn kings may decide who wins the biggest format stoush as the battle for the next-generation to replace DVDs heats up.
And this is the biggest battle since the Betamax VCR took on its rival VHS in the 1980s.

In January, anyone looking for a winner of the war between the two next-generation discs designed to replace DVD would have picked Blu-ray over the opposing HD-DVD format by a country mile.

The bet looked well-placed: the first two Blu-ray players, Samsung's BD-P1000 and Panasonic's BD10, along with a handful of GB BD movies, were in Australian stores in December.

HD-DVD movies were scarce and a player nowhere in sight.

Software support for Blu-ray is hefty. Every big Hollywood studio except Universal backs Blu-ray, and only a handful of labels are opting to press movies in both formats.

Blu-ray can also count on the hardware support of the world's highest-profile consumer electronics companies including Sony, Panasonic, Apple Computers, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Dell, LG and Hitachi.

The HD-DVD camp includes Toshiba, Microsoft, GE, Kenwood, Canon, Onkyo, Teac, NEC and Mitsubishi.

But the clincher for Blu-ray is Sony's Blu-ray-equipped PS3.

The high-resolution gaming console is due out on March 23 and will be snapped up.

No wonder that last month it looked like a 3-0 to Blu-ray.

But just when it looked like being all over for HD-DVD two things happened.

Both prove why a month is a long time in the ever-shifting and often murky politics of consumer electronics.

The arrival of the HD-E1 -- Toshiba's first HD-DVD player -- in Australia -- in the middle of last month was the first.

The second occurred a week earlier at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an event at which the adult industry holds a concurrent exhibition.

The whisper coming from LA got louder as the show went on.

Word was the $72 billion-a-year worldwide porn industry would use HD-DVD to maintain its 10 per cent share of an annual market of standard DVDs worth an estimated $30.3 billion.

The official reason was HD-DVD's lower cost of production.

Unofficially, it is Sony's longstanding and praiseworthy policy of disallowing its media to handle pornography.

The upshot is a Lazarus-like revival of HD-DVD.

But the smart money is still on Blu-ray. The format has the software and hardware firepower to see off HD-DVD, notwithstanding the latter's support from the adult industry.

In the long run, HD-DVD will survive only if the opposing camps agree to build dual-format machines.

It's a rerun of the recordable-DVD debacle all over again, when opposing groups publicly refused to build dual-format recorders.

The confused public bought neither.

In the end everyone caved in and nearly all DVD recorders read the -R and +R recorder formats.

Until the format issue is resolved, Toshiba is pressing on with HD-DVD and has finally released its first Australian high-definition player, the $1099 HD-E1.

The HD-E1 was meant to arrive before December, but after a frustrating number of false starts Australia's first HD-DVD player has finally arrived.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...-11869,00.html