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Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

It's all my fault. I'm terribly sorry. Something critical happened in October 2007 that I forgot to add to yesterday's Diary posting. Before CES 2007 I was going to do it, but I was worried that something bad might happen at CES so I didn't. After the Paramount announcement I figured that CES 2008 was going to be great for us (I mean what could possibly go wrong?), so I went and got myself the license place "HD DVD". Little did I know that right there and then I doomed my favorite format...

Published Wednesday, February 20, 2008 11:33 AM by andypennell
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008 5:20 PM by James Woodcock

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

You never know, it could be worth more in a few years :)

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 5:55 PM by Sean Richer

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

it's unfortunate everything went the way it did. But I have totally seen your car in the area.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 6:06 PM by Amy

# I have to disagree...

No, Andy.  It's _my_ fault.  I haven't picked a winner since I voted for Bill Clinton in 1996.  It's been 12 years of losers for me.  

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 7:26 PM by Pravin

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

Let me guess, you cut off the wrong studio exec on the freeway, and he said, "I'll get you HD DVD! You'll pay for this!"

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:25 PM by andypennell

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

Pravin: you made my day. LOL.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:44 PM by Daniel

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

I too never make the correct choice, I always do my research, but if I go with something it fails, whether it's better or not, I bought an Atari Jaguar, Sega Dreamcast, switched from Nvidia graphics cards to ATI ones, bought a voodoo banshee, bought a gravis ultrasound soundcard, bought a Realmagic hardware mpeg-1 decoder card, the list goes on.

One more reason I thought HD DVD would win was how an existing DVD factory could be upgraded to produce HD DVDS, for blu-ray thats not possible.  In hindsight I think one way Toshiba may have won would have been to get as many cheap HD DVD burners along with cheap recordable media onto the market as possible, I suppose they could still do that and win in the PC market, I'd love 25GB discs to burn backups onto.

Thursday, February 21, 2008 5:25 PM by Louis Skriba AKA da Godfather

# re: Why HD DVD Really Lost The Format War

NO... It is MY fault...

for the last 30 years I have pushed a string up hill trying to get the world to record video to optical discs.. My good friend Kilroy Hughes would listen to me, dirnk with me, and laugh we me at NABs etc.. but would not successfully learn from me that the BD medium is the right way to go... for reasons that:

1)its first and formost a RECORDING format (neat for download and burns of the future)

2)Toshiba does not know marketing

3)Microsoft thinks servers not burners

4)Hollywood has very few tech-heads... the last were working at Pixar, who morphed into Disney...who must listen to Sir Stevie Jobs

5)and the best... 50 gigs is a bigger number than 30 gigs.. and SOON 200 gigs is bigger than 50 gigs... now THAT should have been the killer issue for folks in Redmond.

YET... I have been strongly in the camp that HD-i is the RIGHT way to go on the puter side, the only mistake was to believe that CHEAPER is better...

If any of you who read this want me to help them through this recovery period, and to build a "compromise" that will work for everyone... You can rattle my cage at anytime

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