New York Times: In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/business/26disks.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin' target='_blank'>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/business/26disks.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin</a><br /><br /></div><i>"At first glance, Amir Majidimehr does not look like a game-changer in the battle to develop the next generation of DVD players and discs. As the vice president for Windows digital media at Microsoft, he neither steers a Hollywood studio nor controls one of the many consumer electronics giants that are betting billions of dollars on one of the two new formats that promise to play high-definition movies and television shows. Yet when he and his team in Redmond, Wash., decided last September to abandon their neutral stance and to support Toshiba and its HD-DVD standard over the Blu-ray format led by Sony, the unexpected change of heart reverberated through the technology industry."</i><br /><br />A very interesting article about the ongoing war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. A must read if you're interested in the topic. The article <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/02/25/business/26disk.graphic.html">also has a chart</a> showing comparison points between the two formats.

[Felix Torres]

One thing that jumps out from the chart is that a single-layer 25GB BD-ROM holds 3.8 hours of 1080p content vs 4 hrs of the same video on the 15 GB single layer HD-DVD.

The price of using MPEG2 as your primary encoding, I assume.

Also jumps out: the pioneer player at $1800 list compares to a full bore MCE. I'm thinking anybody with $1800 to spend on movie playback will more likely spend it on the MCE with HD-DVD.

Either Sony's crew get their act together or the gig is up before it starts.
Cause the race to $299 is on...