BluRay Wins!!

The great format war of the early 21st century has finaly come to an end. Toshiba has announced that they will cease production of HD-DVD players. With this announcement, the path ahead for BluRay is clear. The format war is over.

Of course this will not realy come as much of a suprise to those of you who have been following the developments of the HD arena, most of us were solidly backing BluRay anyway. But for most people out there, it comes as of little (if any) consequence because both BluRay and HD-DVD have been so remote back in Malaysia.

For most people the only mention of BluRay was from the PS3. It comes therefore as no suprise that one of the major factors in BluRay's triumph was the Playstation 3. The final blow to HD-DVD came when 20th Century Fox switched allegiance to BluRay, marking the eventual end of HD-DVD. Microsoft is probably at a loss now since the Xbox-360 (while supposedly superior to the PS3) supports HD-DVD (although you have to buy an external drive unlike the pS3). The PS3 also had the edge in that it came out first (correct me if im wrong). Though I guess MS probably erred for caution which is why they decided with an External HD-DVD player, that way it be much easier to make the switchover to BluRay.

The battle between BluRay and HD-DVD was a big one in America, and to a slightly lesser extent in europe. Only this year did BluRay players appear on the Malaysian market (albeit with ridiculous price tag XD) HD-DVD? well i think they might have come a little bit earlier, but in general it was never that economical to sell either back home. This will probalbly change in the near future of course, now that BluRay has won. And with BluRay having being successfully cracked by the pirates (WOOHOO!!) its only a matter of time... Heck pirated BD discs might probably appear before the original ones....