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Beware the ideas of Sony.While it might seem unfair to single out one company in this discussion, it's hard to ignore the number of times Sony has gone ahead and shot itself in the foot with new format introductions. Certainly Sony has been a key player in the development of many of the most successful formats including CD, 3.5-inch floppy discs, and to a certain extent DVD, but when you go to check out the list of failed Sony's formats, it starts to read more like a novel. In addition to the previously discussed Betamax and SACD and MiniDisc, Sony has been behind several formats that never really caught on like UMD, Video8/Hi-8/Digital8, and Memory Stick, plus a bunch of outright failures like MicroMV, HiFD, and Elcaset.Sony's eagerness to develop formats in-house is probably rooted in wanting to have a format as successful as the audio Compact Cassette, invented by Philips in the early '60s. Looking at all the formats that Sony has thrown into the marketplace, it's clear the company sees format licensing as an important potential profit center. It's interesting to note, however, that the most successful formats have been those that Sony developed in joint collaboration with other manufacturers. Blu-ray falls into this camp too, having been developed in collaboration with Samsung and Philips, so there are reasons to be optimistic. ConclusionHDTV is in about the same position today as color television was in the late 1950s — a special new technology used for only a few selected broadcasts, and available to a relatively small percentage of households. But just as color quickly became the de facto standard for all television, within a few years HD will be the norm for all video, with standard definition seeming like something from a prior era. With that in mind I have no doubt that HD video discs will succeed — it's just a question of which one. Right now, Blu-ray has the edge in terms of disc capacity and movie-studio backing, while HD DVD promises lower costs for both disc manufacturing (nice for studios) and HD DVD players (nice for you and me). But it looks like HD DVD has had a more successful first strike with Toshiba's introduction of the $500 HD-A1 (must have taken many sleepless nights to come up with that name) — especially considering Samsung's just-arrived BD-P1000 player sells for twice that price at $1,000. Still, Toshiba's machine can't output 1080p (at least not without an upgrade) while Samsung's can. But does anyone care? Unless you absolutely feel the need to slam dunk the Joneses yet again, my inclination at this point would be to wait a few months for things to settle down. Stay tuned.— Michael Trei

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