We’re brought up to think that competition is good for its own sake. We concentrate on price wars and think we’re getting a bargain. What we seem blind to is how these wars are designed for one purpose: to lock consumers into a proprietary trap that costs us all MORE in the end.

Take VHS vs Beta. Both formats had advantages… but neither had the best features of both. So regardless of who won, it was technically inferior to that theoretical format that COULD have been created if the Sony and JVC design teams got together. Instead, when the inferior compete only the inferior can win. And how much did consumers pay for dead-end equipment when Beta collapsed? Oh ya, we re not supposed to think about that.

Corporations can’t cooperate you say? Do you know there was a DV videotape consortium and a DVD consortium… both designed to create a SINGLE format to avoid a wasteful format war and to promote the fasted market acceptance? Of course once the DV standard was created, Sony and Panasonic rushed to create spin-off professional formats designed to trap consumers in their proprietary formats… again raising costs.

On the other hand another example of how standardization paid off. The FCC created a standard TV format back in the 40s. Consumers could buy TVs with confidence knowing they picked up all the stations (yes I know about the UHF expansion) and broadcasters could invest in broadcast equipment knowing consumer sets could pick up their signals. Compare that to the AM-Stereo debacle in the Reagan years where he favored a market approach to FM formats. It predictably was madness and AM-Stereo failed to take hold.

Competition has its place in the DESIGN phase… where the best ideas are pooled to create the best format. Format competition in the market only raises prices to all and can never guarantee the technically best format will win… or was ever even developed.

I’m building a great HD-DVD collection with all the new sales out now, so I’ll probably end up getting a combo player as my second unit, so I can enjoy my current library and go blu in the future when the dust settles.

CAD Says: “All Bluray had was larger disk capicity, that’s it. ”
well that and higher data rate Neither can be fixed with a firmware update to the player – and all the rest is software based and can evolve over time – IMHO novelty features like pop-ups etc have an ammusment life of around 2 minutes – worthless. I get an HD disk to see a cinema quality presentation of a movie and the only special features i normally use are play , fast forward, pause, reverse and stop and am quite happy with that.

Main reason i got a PS3 is because the Cell chip interests me – and toshiba have done some groundbreaking work with this chip as well as IBM who are using it in a new super computer. Power-PC archecture used in the Wii -Xbox360 and PS3 is common in high performance computing but the Cell derivative is quite a radical design with highly scallable performance. Toshiba are planning to add Cell based Multimedia acellerators to Laptop computers and new interactive features to appliances using the Cell – this chip has an unparalled performance, versatility and power ratio.
Toshiba and IBM indirectly gain from blu-ray by association with the Cell in the PS3. -AND the PS3’s success makes it easier for ID’s to get their hands on a very powerfull archecture – some people are buying PS3’s not for games or Blu-ray but for Cell programming.

The consumers didn’t choose the format the movie production houses did.

I know this is a HD-DVD oriented site so I will try and keep my comments neutral. I do however feel I must coment on what you say.

You may be dissapointed in that Toshiba threw in the towel but if you would have been the director of a company loosing millions of dollars you would have been forced to make some difficult decisions as well. Do not be naive, neither Sony nor Toshiba was in this for anything else than to make money in the end.

The war was supposed ot be decided by the customers? Is any war that? Not really.The VHS was was won due to more content being available on VHS, not because it was a better product in terms of image quality. So the consumers choose the format with the most content. Did the consumers really choose then or was it choosen for them because the VHS camp manage to bring more producers to provide material on their content? What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

HD-DVD as the better product because it was cheaper? That is a bit simplistic isn’t it? Is a Ferrari a inferior product because it is more expensive than a cheap Fiat. Well some people might say so. I do not, even though I could never afford a Ferrari. Also I’m not convinced that HD-DVD prices would have stayed low if th war had ended in HD-DVD’s favor. We do know that they where selling players at a loss.

Interctive features? Well, I’m afraid that all the advocates of interactive features will get their hands full with all the Java crap that they are going to fill the new generation of BD players with. However, this might suprise a lot of people, I consider that a drawback. Myself I want a disk with top quality video and audio and NOTHING ELSE. I do not want interactive menues, PIP, unskippable ads and good knows what kind of crap they put on. It scares me that a disc I insert in a player actually contains good knows what software

I would happily buy a profile 1.0 BD player. All I care about is that it plays every single disk now and in the future. My old Pioneer multizone DVD player (bought legally in Switzerland by the way) is almost 10 years old and still going strong.

Well that whas a lot of ramblings but I guess that the bottom line of what I wanted to say is, we (the consumers) rarely really choose. Buissness deals etc. always play a big role. And when the consumers choose, I’m not sure we end up with the best choice. Would you really say that the original IBM-PC with Microsofts DOS was a superior product for instance? It was a cheap consumer product after all so buy the standards you outline in your post it was the best product…or maybe not