HD-DVD Vs. Blu Ray Compared to Betamax Vs. VHS

This blog will sum up Buzz-Out Laud's past few episode segments that have followed the format war. The HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war is finally coming to a close. Blu-Ray is being supported by most major retailers while HD-DVD is either being dropped or, as in Best-Buy's case, simply not being recommended. Several times, this format war has been compared to the Betamax-VHS format war in the 70s. What everyone fails to mention is that Betamax was owned by Sony, so with all the comparisons being drawn, I find it ironic that no one has mentioned that Sony is the winner(as of now) this time around. Still, comparisons could easily be drawn between the two format wars. Like HD-DVDS and Blu-Ray discs, both Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS offered similar video resolutions and sound. The Betamax, like HD-DVDS had a few different features that set it apart from the VHS, the most notable probably being HIFI sound. Eventually VHS gained the HIFI sound ability however, which could be compared to Blu-Ray's update to gain the special features that HD-DVD offered. Also worth comparing would be the Betamax runtime compared to the HD-DVD storage capacity, both were the biggest criticisms of the two formats(both were smaller compared to their competitor's products), which is why the respective technologies failed.
With HD-DVD gone, Blu-Ray may find new opponents(mentioned in Buzz-Out Loud 662) such as High Def movies on demand, downloadable High-def movies and the like. Also worth mentioning are the up-converting DVD players. These players play standard definition movies up-scaled to higher resolutions. While this does not make standard DVDs play in high definition, it does offer a better picture than a normal DVD player would. These up-converting players run much cheaper than Blu-Ray disc players, with the up-converting players starting around $50.00 and Blu-Rays around $300.00. Obviously the Blu-Ray format will be around for a while now, but the death of HD-DVDs does not mean that there will not be any competition for it. One last note, if the consumer does not have a high definition television, then high definition format movies, or even upscaling dvd players will look exactly the same as a standard DVD.