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back to article Sony CEO: format war in 'stalemate'

The two next-gen optical disc formats - Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD - are running neck and neck, Sony CEO Howard Stringer has conceded. And he admitted yesterday that Paramount's move to favour HD DVD has hindered Blu-ray's pitch. "We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Argh!

    'More to the point, he admitted the argument was largely symbolic - the two sides are fighting for the prestige of winning rather than because of any significant technological superiority.'

    Tw*t - there are only two sides because his company split with the DVD Forum who had already agreed on HD-DVD as the follow on standard to DVD.

    Sony's greed to control every aspect of new media brought this situation about and it's helping sink them.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    physical resilience?

    Until now, I've always heard that BR disks are considerably tougher than HDDVDs, thanks to some hard coating to which the BR consortium owns the patent. The notion that the reverse is true is new to me; is there a source for that?

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  3. Andrew Heenan
    Stop

    Largely Symbolic My Foot!

    The two sides are NOT fighting for the prestige of winning, though I agree that there is no real issue about significant technological superiority.

    The two sides are fighting for the many millions of dollars that the winner will win - and the loser will not.

    Calling that symbolic is a serious misrepresentation of the DVD industry and the motivation behind its progress.

    You'll be telling us next that regionalization is for 'user convenience' :o)

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  4. Rob
    Go

    It's a done deal

    "HD DVD has the DVD brand, lower manufacturing costs, higher physical resilience and a more complete standard."

    Surely with that statement alone, HD-DVD is a winner as it has far more economic benefits to the people of most concern which is the studios. Lower manufacturing costs means higher profit margins.

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  5. Sir Runcible Spoon

    HD-DVD capacity

    I thought they'd started on the triple layer (51GB) HD-DVD's which makes capacity less of an issue (although I did hear of a 200GB Blu-Ray in development but there's no point in that for movies)

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  6. Tristan Hallett

    Next Gen???

    The format wars are more between DVD and Next Gen!

    The way this is continuing there is going to be no next gen at all because everyone is to scared to comit to any of the two formats.

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  7. Alistair MacRae

    Re physical resilience

    Blu-ray is supposed to be coated with an anti scratch coating (its not on all) The disk is not as resistant to snapping an HD-DVD. The surface of a proper Blu-ray should be harder. However i've managed to scratch some blu-ray disks and ruin them. Once you scratch blu-ray its pretty spoilt all the data is very close to the surface

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  8. Kevin Peacock

    Sony Conceding Defeat?

    "'More to the point, he admitted the argument was largely symbolic - the two sides are fighting for the prestige of winning rather than because of any significant technological superiority.'"

    These guys always choose their words carefully.

    If you deconstruct this, then it seems they are conceding the possibility they won't win. For anyone involved in the format 'war', this is big news.

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  9. Tim

    capacity & resilience

    Thing with capacity is many Blu-Rays are released in 25GB format, and some in 50GB.

    Almost all HD DVDs are 30GB, but can often be released on 2 discs if the equivalent Blu-Ray is a 50GB. That's 60GB total. Okay it's two discs, but lower costs and existing DVD replication plants means it's easy to do, and no one seems to care about 2 discs with DVDs these days.

    As for resilience, I think Blu-Ray initially had some problem with the data layer being closer to the surface than on DVD, hence the scratch problem and resolving it with a coating. I got the impression it was less of an issue on HD DVD.

    The best thing now is for Sony to do what they should have a couple of years back and take up the offer to join with HD DVD. Create a dual-format or merge the standards under one name, then have dual-format players, and release whatever format they like for a title and then anyone with a dual-player can play them without a care in the world. Like with DVD+/- R formats.

    Early adopters and PS3 owners will have to buy players for the alternate format though, unless dual-format discs are released.

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