Digital Home Thoughts: The Propaganda War Between HD-DVD and Blu-ray

"Those of us who follow the raging format war between backers of Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD have been quite busy keeping up with missives from both camps. It's also been entertaining to watch each group proclaim its technology's virtues and issue responses countering the other side's announcements. The format battle has reached new, vociferous heights with these latest salvos. So much propaganda is being tossed around, it's easy to lose sight of statements that have substance and roots in reality. It all reminds me of a classic M*A*S*H episode in which a bomb lands in the midst of the mobile hospital compound and spews out propaganda fliers. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of all this is how the dirty war of words is being played out in embarrassing excess on the Internet, across news and blog sites everywhere, thereby guaranteeing that the situation will come to the attention of--and anger--savvy consumers tired of corporate format battles."

All this fighting only proves my point that both formats will fail. I can only imagine how the video rental store or Target will look with multiple formats of the same movie. If the cases look alike, it will become a nightmare for consumers to try and figure out which movie will play in their hardware. Still neither format has really come up with a reason for consumers to care. DVDs look great on HDTVs right now and most people don't even know that DVDs aren't HD in the first place. The jump from VCR to DVD was great and it was easy to see the differences, but the jump from DVD to HD-DVD/Blue-ray isn't and in the end if the consumer can't figure out why they need a new "DVD player", they won't bite.