I’ve just recently written a number of columns (see below) pointing to the fact that HD-DVD sales appear to have a significant lead in the market and calling HD-DVD the winner. This is largely due to two things, PS3 missing shipment projections by well over 50% and Microsoft releasing an unexpected HD-DVD accessory for a very reasonable $200.

However, what most seem to be missing is that I’m also continually saying that unless the market agrees both formats are likely to fail. Even with a significant disadvantage, Blu-Ray can still, with heavy subsidies discounts and funding stay in market. But sales for the combined total for both players will remain a fraction of market potential and regular DVD players will continue to improve.

Right now, at 8 to 10 feet, (normal viewing distance for most large screen TVs today) it is very hard to tell the difference between a normal DVD playing on a current generation DVD player with an up-scaler and one of these more expensive products. The capability to take a lower resolution image and make it look great on a high definition TV has advanced dramatically in the last few years. More important the cost of this technology has fallen like a rock.

Even for storage, while the cost for media is clearly less for optical, the performance of magnetic media is vastly better and CD back up, tape back up, and floppy back up products all gave way to hard drive based back-up solutions. Even though technologies like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD close that gap short term, in back-up convenience rules and it is still vastly easier to move date on a removable or USB hard drive than on an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disk because there are so few HD-DVD or Blu-Ray devices connected to PCs.

So, in the end, HD-DVD appears to me to have won, if the market doesn’t agree quickly, optical media as a class will probably end of life in much the same way game cartridges, tape, and floppies eventually did.

Reference Articles:

http://news.digitaltrends.com
http://www.tgdaily.com
http://www.technewsworld.com
http://www.tgdaily.com