The Blu-Ray and HD DVD Format War
January 16th, 2009. Published under Entertainment. No Comments.
Blu-ray is currently the primary high definition optical disc, and no other competitors are on the market. It was not always like this, however. Before Blu-ray became the official medium, there was a competitor that competed for the same position.
The alternative to Blu-Ray was HD DVD, the format promoted by the company Toshiba. Sony and Toshiba fought for years for the high definition format. At the beginning of 2008, it was clear that Blu-ray would succeed.
Before Blu-ray became the only option, an even number of distributors supported both format options. For years, it was essentially a 50/50 split of the market.
The two format types are more similar than different. They both use 405nm blue-violet laser, which enables large amounts of data to be stored. Blu-ray discs have a higher numerical aperture, so they can emit light over more angles and thus have a greater memory capacity.
Blu-ray discs are also substantially faster than HD DVDs. The bit rate for video on Blu-ray is 40.0Mbits, while the rate for HD DVDs is only 29.4Mbits.
Although Blu-ray has specific advantages over HD DVD, it was not these that led to its victory. Blu-ray succeeded because a major motion picture studio (Warner Brothers) chose it over HD DVD. This had a domino effect that led to Toshiba’s defeat.
The final deciding factor was the incorporation of Blu-ray in to the Playstation 3. Since the game system was so wildly popular, the fact that it supported Blu-ray and not HD DVD was quite important. Of course since both the PS3 and most Blu-ray players are made by Sony, this was not surprising.
It is nearly impossible to find HD DVDs in stores anymore, as the format war officially ended when Toshiba announced it would stop developing HD DVD players in February 2008. Since Blu-ray is a better format, not many people minded the fall of its competitor.