HD vs Blu-ray: Who, What, Why?
You've seen the commercials and heard the lines: "Now on Disney DVD and Blu-ray", or "Available on HD DVD". What the heck is Blu-ray and HD? Why are they here? Will any of this make my life better or worse? The answers in order of the questions: New disc formats, they hold more movie footage, and can anything make your life better or worse?
Seriously, Blue-ray is a new type of DVD technology where a blue ray reads the data on a special type of disc. The Blu-ray format, which fits seven hours of video content onto a single-layer disc, has the support of seven major Hollywood studios, 11 consumer electronics companies, four major IT companies, and leaders in the gaming and music industries, such as Electronic Arts and Vivendi Universal.
HD is a single-layer DVD that can hold up to four hours of video, which is double the capacity of a current DVD. The format has the backing of five movie studios, but only Universal and The Weinstein Co. exclusively.
If you're old enough to remember the Betamax vs VHS wars, you'll remember it came down not to technology, but to who had the biggest war chest when it came to advertising. Beta was better, but VHS won over the masses. In this newest technology war, it might come down to the same thing.
What makes this really interesting is that at least one DVD player manufacturer is making a machine that will play BOTH types of discs, as well as the current type of DVD! LG, the Korean electronics company, feels that since consumers are so confused as to what is the better technology, they might be apt to not purchase anything so as not to waste their money. By having a multi-disc player, they can buy anything they want to without having to worry about which one will work on their player.
If you're interested in details, type "HD vs BLU-RAY" into a search engine and find something to read.
And in case you're wondering what MultiMedia Service Center is going to do about all this, the answer is simple: we'll do whatever the customer wants, whenever the customer decides what to do. It's the only way to go!
Rich
