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Is the HD battle finally over? January 14, 2008

There was good news for Sony and its supporters last week when movie making giants Warner Bros switched from it previous allegiance to rival HD-DVD and said it would be releasing all its future films in Sony’s Blu-ray format.

Although primarily touted for their ability to store high definition film, the storage capacity of this next generation of disc also means they are what will see as the optical storage in future computers.

The battle to determine a standard format for high definition has been raging between the two sides for a long time. It’s a state of affairs similar to the original video clash between VHS and Betamax back in the late 1970.

As is recorded history, VHS came out the winner over Sony’s Betamax technology despite the latter being more technically advanced.

If we are to believe the trend it appears that the Japanese electronics manufacturer has managed to win the day this time around.

An undecided industry, some portions of which sing the praises of one format while others back a rival may initially appear to be healthy competition but actually goes no way to benefit the consumer who, mindful of being left with the 21^st century’s Betamax player, holds out on buying either.

Indeed, the uncertainty over which camp will eventually win the war has meant very few people own devices capable of playing either and there are already prototypes of the next, next generation discs with even an greater storage potential.

Warner Bros’ decision now means that over 75% of movie studios will now only release on Blu-ray seems to be based, at least in part, on support for the format being built into Playstation 3 game consoles.

Depending on your point of view, Sony decision to base the PS3 around its own HD format was either very smart an unfair attempt at dominance.

Of course, once enough consoles are out there in people’s homes and ready to play Blu-ray movies, Sony can start making some weighty claims about take-up of their technology.

I’m a PS3 owner and my Blu-ray movie collection amounts to one Sony freebie.

Casino Royale in high definition is jaw-dropping and I look forward to the day when I can record discs with up to 50GB of data, but I’m not sure how comfortable I am with one company owning the patent to an industry-wide standard format.