Andrew Brinkhaus
Veteran
Blu-Ray.
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Barry_S said:Blu-Ray win *because* of the PS3? Really? I think Blu-Ray is weighing down the PS3 like an anchor. The additional $200-300 cost of the Blu-Ray drive is not helping the PS3--that's for sure. I've been spending the past couple of weeks looking for a Wii and have been talking to people about the PS3 and almost no one cares about the Blu-Ray drive. In fact they equate Blu-Ray with the Betamax format and are wary of wasting their money on a Sony-driven format. Sony has been pissing away it's reputation on proprietary formats that consumers don't like and I've been surprised at the widespread the anti-Sony sentiment. Technical superiority is probably not going to decide this battle and ultimately--everyone loses because people are holding off--waiting for a "winner".
Elton said:My question is: can an XBox 360 play an HD DVD that was encoded and burned to a standard DVD-R...without the HD DVD drive?
Honestly I think this is a loaded quesiton and I think this entire format "war" is essentially marketing hype which winds up pushing both fomats.
The main thing what causes a format war is an either/or scenario - the formats have to be intrinsicly incompatible from eachother. Like in the case of Beta Max and VHS (which people like to use as an analogy to HD/Blu Ray). The big difference is that BetaMax and VHS used entirely different cassettes, making them completely incompatible. There was no way you were ever going to play a BetaMax tape in a VHS machine, and vice verse.
But in this case both discs are the exact same form factor - and there is nothing stopping the ability to make a dual system player. That is a HUGE difference. If they were completely differenct medias then I would say, yes, format war, bring it on. But the discs are the same size and fit into the same machines.
I'm not saying that one format may not become more popular, of course it will - but the other one probably wont' die out completely. This is alot more like the PC/Mac platform 'war'... this isn't an either/or scenario like VHS/Betamax. The majority of people in the world use PCs, but Macs are still alive and doing just fine. Meanwhile - has anyone heard from Betamax lately?
EDITED TO ADD:
I wound up resurrecting this thread because someone linked to it in another thread.
Guess in the end the 'war' wasn't much of one since the topic died out over 7 months ago.
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Or, for that matter, even being able to spell either one.without ever having used either one.