Who has been here since the format war, and are you surprised by how heated it got?

[meremortal]

It's an interesting old throwback topic and I was reading the online geek battles pretty much every week during the entire format war era. It seemed like there were constant plot twists and gossip, and there were even insiders from the major corporations like Microsoft regularly posting. In retrospect, I'm kind of glad hd dvd did not 'win' despite it being the format I was initially rooting for as the underdog. Blu had a pretty rough start out the gate and it took some time to fine tune the authoring as the earlier releases with MPEG-2 video and LPCM audio on 25gb discs were not very efficient and frankly were pretty bad. For a time it seemed like VC-1 and TrueHD on 30gb hd dvd discs was a pretty solid combo, yet 1.5 mbps DD+ was too often used. Blu's 50gb capacity proved to be a pretty good spec that still holds up and the scratch-resistance polish was a really nice addition.

The problem was the format wars confused and divided the public. Most people weren't familiar with the studio alliances and what movies belonged to which company. And not everyone wants to gamble on an uncertain product. It probably hurt blu's adoption after the format wars with people looking to other alternatives like Netflix and streaming. And it didn't help that both formats were always a work in progress such as players requiring firmware updates or some hd dvd combo discs not working. On one hand, the "competition" might've pushed blu to become a better product at the sake of a fairly unnecessary and divisive consumer war. Ultimately, blu's still an awesome format and has come a long way since those days.

[Paianni]

I'm too young to remember the war vividly but I don't think it made a significant difference to consumer uptake of HD formats. HDTVs were very pricey until 2008 onwards and people weren't buying HD players for SD TVs.

It's unfortunate that it had to happen at all, as it meant the neutral 'studios' tended to encode media files that could be accommodated on both formats, hence Blu-ray's extra capacity was often under-utilised for the first two years. Subsequent re-issues are slowly amending that.

Given that the PS3's launch was as bad as Toshiba could hope for and they still lost, it seems extraordinary that at any point after Blu-ray's launch they thought they could win.

[goodstuff]

I actually waited for the war to be pretty much over and jumped in to BD around the end of 2006 and joined in here. I'm glad the best format won

[AKORIS]

I remember considering the selling features of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray at the time---

as one salesman said to me-- HD-DVD has porn-- Blu-Ray has Disney---

even then I knew nothing was more powerful than the mouse!

[Lee A Stewart]

Just to set the record straight, the format war ended in Feb. 20th 2008. Prior to that date the war raged on. 2006 is when both formats were launched: April for HD-DVD and June for BD.

[Pondosinatra]

I remember back in the day thinking Blu-ray would lose (but hoping it'd win) just because Sony had the better technology back in VHS days with Beta, but still lost.

So I once again saw the same parallels and expected the same result. Glad it didn't happen.

[Pondosinatra]

Originally Posted by goodstuff

I actually waited for the war to be pretty much over and jumped in to BD around the end of 2006 and joined in here. I'm glad the best format won

Wonder if anyone knows who the longest (active) member on here is???

[Wendell R. Breland]

News Release 2002/2/19

Tokyo Japan, February 19, 2002: Nine leading companies today announced that they have jointly established the basic specifications for a next generation large capacity optical disc video recording format called “Blu–ray Disc”. The Blu–ray Disc enables the recording, rewriting and play back of up to 27 gigabytes (GB) of data on a single sided single layer 12cm CD/DVD size disc using a 405nm blue–violet laser. The companies that established the basic specifications for the Blu–ray Disc are: Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Thomson Multimedia.

The original BD was a disc in a caddy, it was designed for recording and the laser had to be close to the recording layer which meant there could not be any surface imperfections. Later, the caddy was dispensed with and replaced with the hard coat layer.

I believe this site came online in 2002, I used to look at the hardware posting but was to involved with D-VHS D-Theater to do much else.

Many of us believed BD would be the successor to DVD because of corps listed in the news release. So call me a BD supporter since March 2002.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by Pondosinatra

I remember back in the day thinking Blu-ray would lose (but hoping it'd win) just because Sony had the better technology back in VHS days with Beta, but still lost.

They only lost in some countries. Sony had huge success on a global scale with professional Betacam, Betacam SP and Betacam SR.

Betacam tapes would work in Betamax machines, I would use Betacam tapes from work that were deemed no longer suitable for use and use them in my Betamax for delayed OTA viewings.

Betacam SP and Betacam SR tapes will not work in a Betamax machine.

[avs commenter]

I thought HD DVD was the better tech for the mainstream but the Playstation was just an unstoppable force that was never going to lose even though they botched the launch.

[Wendell R. Breland]

For those that have not watched the video: The Downfall of HD DVD (adult language)

[Show spoiler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=P...ature=youtu.be

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Pondosinatra

I remember back in the day thinking Blu-ray would lose (but hoping it'd win) just because Sony had the better technology back in VHS days with Beta, but still lost.

So I once again saw the same parallels and expected the same result. Glad it didn't happen.

A version of Beta continued for professional use. But it always bugs me when people say beta was better and it lost. Beta I it was better video quality then VHS but on an L-500 tape it could only hold 1h of content which was very restrained, then with Beta II LP was introduced and it reduced quality and brought it up to 2h and with Beta III EP reduced the quality further and brought it up to 3h on that same tape.

part of the reason was functionality (imagine taping that 1h show in SP and missing the ending because you could not record a few minutes extra)

part of the reason was "marketing" with the larger form factor many ignorant people assumed the difference in record/play time was due to size

part of it was economic (I gave an L-500 which has 500' of tape on it as an example but for a price you can move to an L-750 that would hold in SP 1.5h....) but that L750 tape would be more expensive.

[ouflak]

I was here since the early days. It was really something watching everybody slog it out. I also liked learning a bit of history as I went and read about previous 'format wars' such as the DC/AC battle, cylinder vs disc, 33⅓/45, 8-track/cassette, VHS/BetaMax, and others.... There were other smaller moments of pleasure as many of the wilder predictions by both sides came crashing down once reality finally caught up. Since I didn't have a dog in the fight, it was fun to watch. That's probably good summary of my best memories.

Worst: Happened long before things really heated up, or perhaps even started I suppose. It was when I found out they, the industry tech leaders, were going with yet another optical disc format (lumping both Blu-ray and HD-DVD together here) of basically the same physical specs. I had so many hopes and desires that they would come up with something with a far smaller form factor and much more intrisically durable, and having far more, and interesting, software features and gimmicks. Instead, another OD, that actually ended up having far more limited software capabilities, in some cases effectively none except basic playback, atleast initially. I kinda believe one of the reasons for that arguably ill-fated decision (as in still hasn't overtaken DVD) was because some of the more influential in the industry dreamed that everything was obviously going to go 'online' to streaming and downloads and that sort of thing. They probably even thought that transition was going to happen easily within a decade. Whoops.

I blame that lack of innovation for a lot of things concerning the state of affairs right now. HD channels still outnumbered by SD channels. DVD still rediculously outselling everything higher definition combined. Though the numbers have all tightened up, there should be zero SD channels and DVD (and optical disks in general) should be little more than a nostalgia niche at this point in history. We've got 4k TV's easing their way into the mainstream without much of a hitch, and almost no technology that matches the best of their capabilities, or their adoption rate in comparable percentage of the market. And practically no interest among the masses that this should occur, and do so quickly. We're in the era of 'good enough'.

Anyway I keep coming here to keep track with how things are going and maybe even get a bead on how things will eventually go. There's a lot of good solid reading since the extremes have mostly faded away.

[Wendell R. Breland]

^^

Maybe a misstep, it is 33⅓ not 33½.

Now you know how to make a bundle, invent a storage medium that is cheaper and holds more data than a stamped optical disc.

[pab1219]

During the War/After I was Always Blu-ray. With Disney/Sony BLU from jump I never doubted the winner.