HD format war, who cares?

I’m surprised that so many writers still care about the HD-DVD & Blu-Ray format. Several manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are preparing, or already have, dual-format drives. It is only a matter of time before dual-technology players flood the market and prices will go down dramatically (just look at the DVD player market today).

That’s what happens to any “fixed-function” technology. Once you have a device that can play a movie with a decent image quality, there are not a lot of things that can be improved - at least not a lot of things that consumers are willing to pay premium money for.

What do you think?

Update (8/21):
In a recent Business Week article, Andy Parson from Pioneer (pro Blu-Ray) says: “Either a single format wins, or nobody wins”.

That can’t be farther from reality. Right now, we have many DVD formats (DVD, DVD-R, DVD+, DVD RW, DVD DL) and quite frankly it’s a little confusing, but not to the point that users can’t deal with it. Multi-format drives are fulfilling their roles perfectly: users don’t really care about formats if they can read/write all of them.

Of course, having multiple standards makes adoption slower, but it will eventually catch on. And who’s complaining? It’s the very people who can’t agree on a single standard, because they want to keep all the licensing royalties for themselves.

Check out the business week article from Catherine Holahan to get more details on everyone’s stance in the industry.