Saturday, July 15, 2006
Untitled
On Sunday, the war between the new high-definition-disc formats officially began. Sure, HD DVD has been available since May, but as of June 25th, Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player is now available in stores for anyone who wants to buy it. With the opening battles of this format war now raging, we invite the generals behind the two factions to take a look back at previous conflicts before planning their next attacks.
While most of the people on the planet are familiar with the major types of media used throughout the world like CD, DVD, and even their predecessors, the audio cassette tape (formally called the Compact Cassette) and VHS, the route to a successful format is littered with the remains of long-forgotten attempts that had a lot of promise, but failed to capture the public's imagination. How many people have even heard of Elcaset, DCC, or SelectaVision, never mind having seen or used them? Yet these formats along with many others were foisted onto the market with plenty of fanfare by major electronics companies, only to flounder and eventually fail. There are specific reasons why they failed, and the backers of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc would do well to heed them if they want to avoid creating yet another white-elephant format. What follows are some of the most important lessons to be learned from the Ghosts of Formats Past.
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