Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Talks End

Last minute talks to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats have failed. Matsushita, owner of the Panasonic brand, has stated 'the market will decide the winner.' From the article: "The two sides held talks last year in the hopes of avoiding a prolonged format battle similar to the one between Betamax and VHS videotapes in the 1980s, knowing that it could discourage consumers from shifting to the advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth. But the talks soon fizzled out, with each side reluctant to establish a format based on the other's disc structure. At stake is the $24 billion home video market and a slice of the personal computer market as PCs will be equipped with Blu-ray or HD DVD optical drives."

Lift your wallet

[neonprimetime]

"It's now a test of physical strength," Tsuga said.
Matsushita plans to launch DVD players later this year with a price tag likely to top $1,000.

Customers will need to workout just so they can lift their wallet up to the counter to pay for it!

Re:Third way

[ByteGuerrilla]

Are you suggesting that LG is going to do something [i]without[/i] Samsung having already done it? Five years of copying Samsung designs and hardware and they're just going to throw that lucrative business practice out the window. Shocking.

Re:Just fine

[Nesetril]

yeah so now we just need a small independent party to come up with a next generation format which will use a green laser. Didn't Ralph Nader tell you to "be prepared"?

Re:Just fine

[HoboMaster]

So now both formats use a blue and a red laser.

Does that mean we can watch in 3D now?

Not sure, but we can hope...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

I'm personally hesitant to bet any real money on the outcome of this, for all the reasons you mention & the possibility of the right marketing campaign doing the unexpected. I mean, I didn't think a crippled, proprietary, DRM-encumbered & vendor lock-in creating digital music player would become the BigMac of consumer electronics, and yet there are these swarms of limping, listing Pod people all around me now. Yikes!

For all the well articulated reasons though, I sure hope that folks of the /. ilk do their part to kill this thing.

Here's an idea... we all have relatives & acquaintances who love forwarding alarmist & dramatic tin-foil-hat emails, right? How 'bout a little informal "Best alarmist subject line" contest right here for HD-DVD & BluRay's furtherance of HDCP, DRM & Trusted Computing? "New DVD format will let Bill Gates lock you out of your computer!" "Hidden codes on new DVD format lets Sony secretly make new DVD players 'expire' & stop working!" "New media won't play on old monitors or TVs!" (I'm still trying to decide if the fingers of innuendo should point towards the Trilateral Commission, the Free Masons, Scientology, the Skulls, or the Catholic church. I'm leaning towards the Skulls, but open to other opinions...)