A Snub for Blu-Ray

For the record, my family bought a Betamax VCR way back in the dark ages of the VHS vs. Betamax wars. I can tell you for a fact that it worked better and that it was easier to store the damn tapes because they were smaller. There's a reason that the television industry hung onto that format for a long time after it was dead in the consumer market.

However, it seems that the pornography industry has something against Sony's video formats, because Wired has just reported that, in the next-gen DVD format wars, pr0n has gone with HD-DVD. This, many argue, is similar the move that killed Betamax: when the porn video distributors went with VHS as a standard instead.

Will it happen again? Only time will tell. Technology has come far enough now that there are already dual-format players in the works, and if I had to guess, I'd say that will become the "standard". They'll be more expensive at first, but I betcha the price will come down once there is a certain volume of them on the market. We, as consumers, have the distinct advantage this time that the two formats are burned onto stunningly similar media.

Don't even get me started on the disadvantage we consumers have that both of these new formats are DRM'ed up the wazoo. I'm rooting for either a) both of them to fail or b) a third contender to enter the marketplace, with less of a reliance on handcuffing me to their idea of what it's "safe" for me to do with the media that I legally buy and own.

So I suppose what I'm saying here is, "Meh."