Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently said that the Blu-Ray and HD camps could have collaborated better in the past to develop a single high-definition format. Stringer even said that he wished he could go back in time to make that possible.
Regardless, the battle is still raging, as one side sells more disks and the other more players, with studios switching alliances, and the big box retail stores doing the same, often depending upon who's offering the cheapest player at the time.
Stringer's regrets may have to do with the news that Wal-Mart is currently selling a Toshiba HD-DVD player for $198. On Amazon the same Toshiba A3 unit is selling for about $250 (though it also includes two HD titles: 300 and The Bourne Identity, which buys down the costs somewhat).
The cheapest Blu-Ray unit on Amazon is $400, or you could always buy a Playstation 3, which plays Blu-Ray but that'll set you back $500.
Earlier I said the battle was raging, but perhaps "simmering" would be a better word, as sales of both players and both disc formats have been dismally small as consumers sit out the skirmishes, waiting for the final battle to occur and a winner to be announced.
But they might have a while to wait, as Market research firm Forrester Research recently stated that the format deadlock was sure to continue well into 2009, if not longer.
Consumers may be remembering the Betamax/VHS wars, in which one technology (Sony's) was said to be superior but still failed to carry the day, leaving those who'd flipped the technological coin and lost with what eventually would become a very expensive door stop. And a lot of unsupported media.
And as retail DVD prices have fallen, in some cases to as low as $5 a disc, they may also have decided that neither high-definition format is worth the average price of $25 a disc. Especially when today's "upconverting" players can take the average DVD and "rez-it-up" in quality.
The current selection of titles is pretty dismal as well, with some motion-picture studios sitting firmly on the HD DVD side of the fence and others on Blu-Ray's, and with a few hedging their bets and offering titles in both formats. And a couple are refusing to play at all, like us, still waiting for the dust to settle.
And what's all this have to do with Apple?
Funny you should ask.
Apple announced plans week to join the Blu-Ray group all the way back in 2005, but has yet to introduce any Mac desktop or notebook that includes a Blu-Ray player. While there are some technical issues involved, mostly with securing the information coming off the disk so it can't be intercepted, those would not seem to be insurmountable. And especially not with three years in which to do the development.
Is Apple waiting for the price of the drives to drop? Or maybe for drives that also let users read/write DVDs as well as play Blu-Ray formats? Perhaps.
Or is it something else?
Stay tuned, because I'm about to tell you which format is going to win.
Comments