10 Gallon Hat I can’t believe I ate the whole thing

Blu-Ray or HD DVD – doesn’t matter…

With the official end to the format war and Blu-Ray looking like the winner I started thinking about why it doesn’t matter. 

The interweb is full of proclamations claiming Sony’s Blu-Ray format is the future of our mind-numbing in home entertainment.

I just don’t see it.  See my review of some of the popular download services.

The number of people with High Definition TVs is still not that high and the number of people with Blu-Ray DVD players is even closer to rock bottom. (I know my parents make at least 1 consumer in the world).Not to say it isn’t an enjoyable setup to have, but the fact remains most people just down have the moolah or the interest in this kind of equipment.

While the format war is over, and Blu-Ray marches on, I think by the time the average household catches up Broadband access and bandwidth will have reached acceptable numbers to provide every household with High Definition movies without a player at all, but instead in a file format that can be played from cheap Media Centers, TIVO and  Extenders (or Apple TV if you fell for that.)

Xbox live, and others, already provide downloads of HD content to be watched on users TVs. I think the number of these users will grow a lot faster then people looking to use a more physical format like Blu-Ray or the now obsolete HD DVD.

The format war will have moved on to file formats and hopefully we can all agree on an open portable format and by that time the Movie industry will have let go of its grip on obsolete licensing strategies.

Let’s have some crab legs while we wait for this whole thing to sort itself out!