Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Jan 5, 2008 5:43 PM, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> It looks like I may have guessed wrong on this one.  History might not be
> repeating itself.  --Mike

But history never *was* repeating itself, in very important ways.

1) Sony was not trying to go it alone this time.
2) Partly because of (1), there were always at least as many Blu-Ray
titles out there.
3) This race was about an upgrade path, rather than the start of home
video. All of the media empires out there can, do, and
    must distribute their stuff on DVD also at this point, and despite
the large number of HD TV sets being sold out there, nobody
    *has* to have this technology to do anything until they are good and ready.
4) The VHS/BetaMax war kept on going because one party kept on pouring
money down a hole, and it's not clear to me that this
    was going to happen again because for most players (the media
companies) the actual choice of format makes no difference
    other than they would like to be making just one as soon as possible.

Which is not to say that you should have predicted either format to
win; I think it was always pretty much a coin-flip, and I did not see
any reason to expect one or the other to win *except* market share of
titles, and I wasn't going to predict how that was going to shake out,
especially given the fact that everybody has been bribing each other.

In any case, I'm not going to be buying a player until NetFlix has
enough titles for this to be useful.

jking

_______________________________________________
discussion mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/discussion