Format War

[DarthDVDS]

I pulled this from Movieweb.com


The format war between the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats doesn't appear to be over anytime soon... and the fans love it.

The battle for supremacy of the hi-def DVD market has its own brand of fans on each side, and they're using several different venues on the Internet to show which flag they're flying. Here's a small sampling of some recent blurbs from these sites:

"All's fair in the war at this point. Payback is a *****." - from a HD-DVD fan on HighDefDigest.com.

"I take anything and everything that Microsoft says with a grain of salt the size of the Paramount Pictures mountain." - from a Blu-ray supporter on HomeTheaterForum.com.

"You're either a troll or just an ignorant fool." and "BD fanboys are friggin' idiots." - from two HD-DVD fans on Engadget.com.

Apparently one site, AVSForum, had to shut down their forum for a week because a debate escalated to physical threats and the police were involved in some cases. The heart of the format war is quite clear to one observer: cash.

"Money. Plain and simple." said Geoff Kleinman, editor and founder of DVDTalk.com. "Consumers in this war are voting with their dollars, and they don't want to see that investment be for a format that dies, making their investment 'worthless,'" he said. "People can be extremely dogmatic when it comes to this format war."

The websites that serve as the venue for these cyber-debates do have moderating policies in place, for those who go to far.

""When someone chooses a technology, they are usually convinced that it is the best, and when others don't agree, they take it personally," said Ben Drawbaugh, an Engadget.com HD reporter. "We're fortunate, and we don't see threatening comments. But we do see some that are insulting. Sometimes we delete them, other times we let them go. It depends on how bad they are - and if they are witty."