which will win the format war? blu-ray or hd-dvd?

Answer 1

Too early to tell.

Answer 2

At this point, several things could happen. One is that as players that play both formats get cheaper, these combo players will be bought and it will turn out the same way as the DVD+R and DVD-R or whatever did.

Or the war could continue until digital downloads are a reality. But those have been said to come soon for the past five years so take it with a grain of salt.

Or Blu-Ray will win because of the exclusive support of Disney.

Answer 3

In my view both formats will likely become irrelevant in the medium to long term. Read the link and see the writing on the wall -- the future is wireless and/or broadband downloads of HD programs (probably following further improvements in compression) rather than physical disks.

In the short term, HD DVD still has the best chance of 'winning' what is increasingly beginning to look like a battle to see who made the best buggy whip when the world was moving to adopt automobiles. I say that because Blu-ray continues to make serious strategic errors at every step (incomplete, confusing spec, low disk manufacturing capacity, poorly thought out DRM, etc.).

In reality the outcome of the war is still up in the air, but will likely be won by whichever format first sells a sub $200 player and/or when Warner pulls the plug on one or other format.

The other issue that bears on this is that HD disks still represent less than 3% of disk sales (HD plus DVD) and, frankly, the average consumer doesn't see why s/he should buy into a new format when a) they don't have the equipment to benefit from it, and b) DVDs give perfectly satisfactory results.

So ... from several perspectives, even if one format was discarded tomorrow the one left has a long way to go before it can be considered a "winner".

Answer 4

I think it will end the way the DVD-R v. DVD+R war ended. Device makers will get tired of the whole thing and produce drives that can read both formats. Then the public will embrace the new standards without caring which is which. (The difference will continue to be very important to the companies involved, but everyone else will ignore them.)

Answer 5

I'd put my bet on Blu-ray. With Sony's PS3 able to play blu-ray out of the box, not only is it a top notch game machine, but it's also the cheapest blu-ray player on the market. And with millions of PS3's already in consumer's living rooms, they now have a huge market of customers who really have no reason to go out spend hundreds of dollars more to get HD-DVD.

Maybe if the Xbox 360 had built their HD-DVD in, instead of making it an optional upgrade, they might have put up a good fight. But who wants to spend a paycheck on a 360, then have to spend $200 more to play movies? And it's not even internal, it hangs off the side.

Answer 6

I think they'll fight it out long enough that another format will come in and take over.

Think huge hard drives and incredible bandwith - download HD content from the web, and store it on a media server in your home. Digital signature validation when you go to play the movie.

The only thing missing is the bandwith. It would take a few hours to download a full HD movie on a standard DSL connection today, but within a few years they could have fixed that, and people would shop for movies on the web just like they do for music. Instead of buying CD's, you buy mp3's.

Answer 7

I Think Blu-ray =]