The mighty warrior Toshiba fingers his katana as sweat drips from his brow. After many minutes of this battle of wills with the warlord known only as Sony, a smile crept onto the face of Toshiba. He had gained something, if only briefly, in this contest of honor.
As the two tested combatants stand over the small shiny disk known as DVD, others recognized warriors line up in support of the terrible Toshiba. Mighty Mitsubishi Chemical and horrific Hitachi Maxell join Toshiba in support of the newest glint in the little disk, the HD-DVD recordable option.
This ongoing battle between the sly Sony and Toshiba rages yet nary a drop has been spilled yet. The little disk gleams blue as the two warriors grimace and a beam of blue light comes down from the sky between them.
Life like images pour out of the disk and they look real. Sony smiles when TDK throws out a new disk beside Sony. It is the 100Gb version. The ground shook under the weight but then comes Hitachi Maxell. They also skim a disk across the field. It is only 15 Gb but wait it’s recordable.
The ground continued to shake. The battle rages on.
The two tech giants of Japan have all but stopped negotiations on the direction of high density DVDs using blue lasers to extract even more information. Right now, Sony plans to launch their PS3 with their Blu-Ray technology in the spring of next year. Toshiba would appear to be ready to go with their HD-DVD and the HD-DVD recordable format should be ready for 2006.
Unfortunately, this looks like another fight over formats, similar to the Panasonic/Sony battles over VHS versus Beta. Sony lost that war but Sony might win this one. Many movie companies have been picking sides. Disney, who originally opposed the videocassette stuff altogether, has come down on the side of Sony’s Blu-Ray. Disney has become quite the potent force in the home video market and generates a tremendous amount of income from that market.
Other movie companies are siding with Toshiba though. “Oceans 12” and other movies are slated to come out this year on HD-DVD though. It really is a wait and see game.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
