Well, this sucks ass.  


today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nT197333

Sony, Toshiba give up on unified DVD format-paper

Tuesday 23 August 2005, 8:07pm EST



TOKYO, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Groups headed by Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) offering competing technologies for next-generation DVDs have given up efforts to develop a unified format, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Tuesday.

For three years, the two groups have pushed to have their respective technology standards adopted to gain dominance in the multibillion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

Toshiba, along with NEC Corp. (6701.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sanyo Electric Co. (6764.T: Quote, Profile, Research), has been promoting HD DVD, while Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research), the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

The two groups have held negotiations on unifying their formats to persuade consumers to shift to advanced discs and to promote growth in the industry.

But negotiations fell through as neither side yielded, and time ran out to develop a format before the launch of new products from both groups, the paper said.

Officials at Toshiba and Sony were not immediately available for comment.

Sony's Blu-ray technology is also backed by Dell Inc. (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research).

At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

someone's going to win the format wars.  My advice, stay out of the market until it happens.  Those LaserDisc and Digital Audio Tape were the next best thing, so are 2 new DVD formats.  1 will win.

Quoted: Beta was and still is better!

Better doesn't guarantee market dominance.   If you build a better mousetrap, China will sell a million worse ones at 3% of the price

Beta was good, just like minidisc was/is awesome... but Sony screwed the pooch BIGTIME on those formats.  Proprietary never wins.


I think in the next generation DVD forum will probably lean toward blu ray.  27GB on one side of a disc?  Nice.  I'm not too familiar with HD DVD.  

I'm pretty irritated at all these competing formats. I stayed out of the market for a DVD burner until they had burners that handled all the major formats. I refuse to get stuck with a format that goes out of availability.  I mean, shit, why do we really need DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, etc, etc.

I had high hopes for Blue-Ray discs, but it looks like that's been pissed on too. I guess I'll have to wait for the next-gen multi-format burners for that too.

Sony's already going to have a leg up on the competation as their PS3 will come stardard with their format.  This means automatic market capture.

Hell, the studios are releasing movies on the PSP format.  But why anyone would buy that is beyond me.

For burning non-HD stuff the current technology is excellent.
I always wait a couple years before I jump on the new tech in video.

I still have a VCR.
I still have an analog VHS format camcorder.
I still have a rear projection TV
I am using a 4X DVD burner in my computer.

Two years ago I bought my first TV DVD player.
Last year I bought a stand alone TV DVD burner.

Dual disc?
HDTV?
TIVO?

I'll wait.

Quoted: I'm pretty irritated at all these competing formats. I stayed out of the market for a DVD burner until they had burners that handled all the major formats. I refuse to get stuck with a format that goes out of availability.  I mean, shit, why do we really need DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, etc, etc.

That's what I did.  I'm a techie... I work on computers, and have for over 5 years, but I wasn't going to get some proprietary format drive.  Just a couple weeks ago I finally bought a multiformat drive.  It does the DVD +R, -R, RW, RAM and dual layer.   It wasn't so bad on the price, and I got some DVD -R media for cheap.

VHS won because sony didn't like supporting porn.

DVD won over DIVX for the same reason

Buy what ever the major porn houses use.