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MGM Purchase Gives Sony An Edge In Disc Format War
Grump writes "The New York Times reports: 'The purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by a group led by Sony will not only give the company an enormous film library but also considerable power in its fight to set the format for the next generation of digital video discs.' The article goes on to suggest that Sony is gearing up for another Betamax-style failure."
With Microsoft supporting the NEC and Toshiba blue ray format. And Sony, with its huge movie, and technology back up, who is more likely to win the war of the formats?
Hopefully, the consumers.
Yes, but the capacity on current DVDs is simply not sufficient for HD signals. And HD is where we're headed...
This is also the reason I favour the Blu-Ray format; it has 25 GB where HD-DVD offers 15 (I think both numbers are per layer, could be wrong).
Going from 4.5 to 15 per layer does not seem worth the effort, from 4.5 to 25 just might be. Also, I think the HD-DVD camp is making the very common mistake of overestimating *practical* video compression technology. Theoretically 15 GB might just be enough for 3 hours HD movie at 1920x1080i. However, the current DVD market shows most studios can't tell their arse from a good mpeg encoder.
Video compression is a bit like compiler technology; when Intel launches a new pentium it's like "well it won't work faster than the old one right away, but with a smart compiler it'll really fly"... however, that new compiler never materializes, or simply isn't used by your software vendor. So your shiny new processer won't fly after all.
Therefore, in CPUs and DVD storage capacity alike, over-engineer where you can! Vote blu-ray.