As you may have noticed the HD format war is finally over. Toshiba and HD DVD has retired from the market and Sony can celebrate their revenge over VHS. Hopefully most manufacturers will now launch products and prices can come down to a reasonable level. Personally I am waiting for a Denon or Marantz, but any input is welcome. But what will happen to SACD, one of the other format victories from Sony? (Well, Sony has nearly managed to kill this format them selves, but that’s an other story).
So what did actually happen? One important aspect is of course Sony’s support for Blu-ray as a standard feature in all PlayStation 3 game consoles. But more important is probably the major studios’ support for Blu-ray, also from those initially supporting HD DVD. Without any content HD DVD couldn’t stand any chance.
But despite the victory, Blu-ray is still premature. PlayStation 3 was delayed several times waiting for the Blu-ray technology. And even if there already a significant number of players out there, only a few support the Blu-ray profile 2.0 which is what could be considered the first full specification. Blu-ray profile 1.1 was released only to get reduce the head start of HD DVD, but should probably never been released, because it is only with profile 2.0 you get full interactivity and ethernet return channel functionality. But anyway, the pre-release was very necessary to cope with the competition from HD DVD and it obviously succeeded.
Congratulations Sony!
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