Sony contends the next generation DVD format war is over. Although uninformed consumers and press might agree, we think Sony is still upset about losing the first major format war. If history repeats itself then welcome back to the 1980s. This is VHS verses Betamax all over again. Betamax was a proprietary Sony format that rivaled VHS and although Sony claimed better resolution and clarity it apparently didn’t matter.

One Hit Wonder

Sony has a heck of a history with failing media formats. In fact, of almost 20 Sony formats only one has been successful with the masses, the now obsolete 3.5″ diskette, also known as the floppy disk.

Hey Sony, Nice Try

By now Sony surely expected to sell boatloads of Playstation 3 game consoles, which could have possibly been the spark that would have given Blu-ray its fire, but sales have been dismal when compared to the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Even so, the PS3 is the only console that includes support for next generation DVDs out of the box. The PS3 comes bundled with the Blu-Ray movie Talladega Nights which is an expected and monopolistic tactic that has dramatically and artificially inflated adoption of the media format. In essence Sony bought the right to claim itself preliminary winner of the next generation high definition DVD war, for the time being. It is a short term strategy to boost sales numbers and hardware saturation in hopes to sign studios and release more films on the format. Sony did this before with the UMD format on the PSP with Spiderman 2. It didn’t work then and I sincerely doubt it will work now. That’s not to say Blu-Ray will completely fail, just that Sony continues using proven ineffective strategies. If you take the bundled Blu-Ray DVDs out of the picture, HD-DVD is moving significantly more units.

The not so Minor Detail of 1080p

Literally more than 99% of Americans don’t have televisions capable of displaying 1080p resolution, or 1920 x 1080, which is really necessary to fully appreciate the difference between DVD and HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. The success of high definition DVDs is contingent upon the adoption of HDTVs, and as long as standard definition televisions are for sale, so will DVDs. Until such a time, there will be no clear winner of this seemingly epic battle.

Filed under: Sony, HD