Posted By: Darksaviour69
Rob Enderle the Principal Analyst in the Enderle Group, has posted an article at tomshardware.co.uk, about the HD DVD/Blue-ray war:
Much like it is with game systems; competing formats for video are not about the best technology. They are about the most prevalent technology. It is expensive to publish movies and, at least for now, you can't put Blu-ray and HD DVD disks into the same box.
With the Xbox 360 moving so strongly into the market and the top accessory this year being the $200 HD-DVD drive the battle may be over by year end. There is every chance that there may be as many as ten times more HD DVD players than Blu-ray players in the market by the end of the year - even if you don't factor in that HP, the current leader in PC sales, started shipping desktop computers with a $100 HD DVD option. This, coupled with a much lower overall cost for the stand alone players as well as better support for legacy TVs and dual mode disks (that have both legacy DVD and HD-DVD content on a single disk), suggests that HD-DVD is now the format to beat.
HD-DVD wins because of the Xbox 360 - which is ironic, given Blu-ray should have won because of the Playstation 3. Instead, Blu-ray has delayed the Playstation 3 to a point where Sony may have to wait until the Playstation 4 to recover.
BetaMax, Mini-Disk, MemoryStick, and now Blu-ray. At least Sony is consistent. Also, if there is one company that is really looking forward to a better 2007 more than Sony I don't know of it. Boy, when you couple in root kits and battery/camera recalls, you are talking about a really nasty run of bad luck for Sony this year.
Full article
Xbox 360 HD DVD Player for $199.90/£103.43