The IT Nerd

As if Toshiba and their now dead HD DVD format needed another kick in the butt, comes the news that Microsoft has dropped the HD DVD drive add on for the Xbox-360. In my humble opinion, if Microsoft had simply built the drive into the Xbox the way Sony built Blu-Ray support into the Playstation3, we might still be talking about a format war as opposed to the format war being over and done. But they bundled it as an optional accessory which didn’t help adoption of the HD DVD format. One has to wonder if this won’t hurt sales of the the Xbox-360. Existing owners may feel that they have obsolete hardware, which gives the perception of an advantage to the Playstation3. I truly think that Microsoft has damaged its whole gaming platform by getting into a sparring match with Sony over disc formats. Only time will tell I guess.

While I’m on the subject of HD DVD, this video has been making the rounds on YouTube for a few weeks now. Basically, someone took a scene from the movie Downfall and replaced the subtitles to reference the war between HD DVD and Blu-Ray. It apparently surfaced just after Warner Brothers defected to the Blu-Ray camp just before CES. It gets my vote for funniest video of the year.

This entry was posted on February 24, 2008 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Blu-Ray, HD DVD, Microsoft, Xbox-360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.