Thursday, January 17, 2008

Get Screwed by Blu Ray

Everyone's probably aware (to some degree) of the format war in the next generation of DVD technology between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Well, the 'war' is probably coming to an end with Blu-Ray as the victor, now that almost all of the movie studios are supporting it.

Unfortunately for many of the people who made Blu-Ray the better selling format, they're going to get shafted along with HD-DVD supporters, because it seems that some of the players that were on the market till the end of last year will not be able to support all of the special features being incorporated in the new 1.1 and 2.0 Blu-Ray 'profiles'. The Blu-Ray group's lame ass is excuse is that, apparently, they had to release the players early before all of their standards were finalized in order to compete with HD-DVD . Well ain't that just swell? HD-DVD, on the other hand, already had similar features finalized and in place! The Blu-Ray folks words of consolation to their suckers customers are that these people will still be able to enjoy the movie itself in high def and they probably didn't buy into the technology for the special features in any case. And yet these features are touted as being among the benefits of the Blu-Ray format!

As far as I'm concerned, I don't give a rat's ass about either of these formats. I'll probably eventually switch to one of them when it becomes ubiquitous, but for now, regular DVD is more than good enough for me*. And it ought to be good enough for anyone who doesn't have a high-def display to take advantage of the high-def content. By the time DVD finally draws its last breath, this 'next gen' hardware ought to be cheap enough to make a smooth transition, and who knows, online distribution might have taken off in a big way as well. No matter what, I don't think this stuff is an investment worth making right now; unless, of course, you have an uber-rich uncle who just croaked and left you a fortune (in which case, hello friend!).

*Though I have to admit that the HD content does look stunning if you have the kit for it.

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