UK Xbox Boss says New Format war is nowhere near importance of VHS & DVD

[Zeus]

The UK Boss has revealed that he believes the 'next-generation' format war is nowhere near the scale of importance as experienced "between VHS and DVD." We could've sworn it was between VHS and BetaMax, and DVD resulted as a unification between groups. The boss stated that Blu-ray is too far ahead of the market and online distribution is where the next disruptive technology lies.



Speaking to The Times, the UK Xbox boss suggested that the supposed battle between the two formats may be rendered obsolete by future technology.

“It’s nowhere near the importance of the format war between VHS and DVD,” he said. “The internet is becoming an increasingly important medium. Surely online is going to be the distribution method for much of the high-definition content [in future].

“[Blu-Ray is] two, three years ahead of the market. People won’t want to replace their entire DVD collections, and they’ll get a better resolution with a standard DVD on an Xbox than a PS3.”

Thompson added that there was “really little” under the PS3’s hood that made him think, “’Gosh, I wish we had that’.”


News Source: <A href="http://www.mcvuk.com/news/26244/Microsoft-boss-belittles-Blu-Ray" target="_blank">MCVUK</a>

[bnolsen]

He's right. Optical media has had its day.

Last major shift:

Magnetic tape -> Optical (casette -> CD, VHS -> DVD)

Next major shift possibilities:

Optical -> Internet (content delivery).
Optical -> Solid State (as flash improves/becomes cheaper)

My money is on the internet for now...

[blade47167]

Honestly tho HD-DVD and Blu-ray are leading to digital distribution since you can link into the net with them and download additional items. The content is there but the speed to distribute true high def video still really isn't there. A high def movie with content that takes over 100mb per minute it would take forever to download.

[taiki]

He's right. Optical media has had its day.

Last major shift:

Magnetic tape -> Optical (casette -> CD, VHS -> DVD)

Next major shift possibilities:

Optical -> Internet (content delivery).
Optical -> Solid State (as flash improves/becomes cheaper)

My money is on the internet for now...

Wrong. Content delivery is hampered by DRM, and the fact that broadband hasn't been accepted by a majority of consumers.

Solid state sucks. My optical disc will go bad in 50 years or so, but solid state will break in a matter of 10 or so.

My guess is after BluRay/HDDVD, it's off to holographic medias with incredibly high densities.

Besides, the guy ended up on the wrong side of the high end format war and he has a vested interest in telling consumers that internet delivered content is the wave of the future because that's what he's selling.

(HD content is going to go on the XBL Market Place soon.)

[vancitypimp]

The internet would basically blow up and shut down if everybody downloads a HD movie at the same rate like people buying or renting DVDs as most ISPs cant handle that much bandwidth. Maybe in like 10 years when Internet2 is available....

[taiki]

The internet would basically blow up and shut down if everybody downloads a HD movie at the same rate like people buying or renting DVDs as most ISPs cant handle that much bandwidth. Maybe in like 10 years when Internet2 is available....

Internet2 will NEVER EVER be available. EVER.

[bnolsen]

My guess is after BluRay/HDDVD, it's off to holographic medias with incredibly high densities.

Ugh, you are right. I forgot about holographic storage. For now it's mostly still tech demo stuff, though.

Instead of higher res content, I actually want decent content and good movies. Hollywood quality has been going down the tubes for years now. Content is what makes 95+% of a movie good, not shiny effects.

[Havok154]

Ugh, you are right. I forgot about holographic storage. For now it's mostly still tech demo stuff, though.

Instead of higher res content, I actually want decent content and good movies. Hollywood quality has been going down the tubes for years now. Content is what makes 95+% of a movie good, not shiny effects.

Actually I'm pretty sure they are starting to sell holographic equipment to businesses. Obviously it's insanely expensive but that's how it all starts. After some time, the prices drop and the media moves to the retail consumers.

[mr_dimsum]

The internet would basically blow up and shut down if everybody downloads a HD movie at the same rate like people buying or renting DVDs as most ISPs cant handle that much bandwidth. Maybe in like 10 years when Internet2 is available....

Please tell me this statement was some inside joke. :D

If more people are downloading, all it takes is a bump in servers, line speeds, and so on. The internet will not "explode" because of overuse, because every site likely has its own independent servers or a host server that runs them.

I do agree with others though in that I don't think today's bandwidth (at least in North America) is really capable of pushing hi-definition content through streaming or downloading in general as it is just to slow to really feel like a convenience since buying a DVD can be just a corner away and can take a few minutes to "own".

He may have a point though.. In that a few years down from now, one technology is going to slow (and I assume that's hi-def content in terms of bitrate / byte size, compression technology) versus the adaption rate and available home high-speed rates. A few years ago, a 1-3 mbits were considered top of the line.. Than doubled to 6.. Now we see rates in the teen's, and in other parts of the world, even faster down's and up's for marginal prices. Who knows where it might be in 3 years from now.

[Xenogears V]

Blu-Ray is already winning, even before to sell the Ps3 in the territories pal, I believe that the support Hd is already defeated!.

[taiki]

Please tell me this statement was some inside joke. :D

If more people are downloading, all it takes is a bump in servers, line speeds, and so on. The internet will not "explode" because of overuse, because every site likely has its own independent servers or a host server that runs them.

I do agree with others though in that I don't think today's bandwidth (at least in North America) is really capable of pushing hi-definition content through streaming or downloading in general as it is just to slow to really feel like a convenience since buying a DVD can be just a corner away and can take a few minutes to "own".

He may have a point though.. In that a few years down from now, one technology is going to slow (and I assume that's hi-def content in terms of bitrate / byte size, compression technology) versus the adaption rate and available home high-speed rates. A few years ago, a 1-3 mbits were considered top of the line.. Than doubled to 6.. Now we see rates in the teen's, and in other parts of the world, even faster down's and up's for marginal prices. Who knows where it might be in 3 years from now.

Right but the idea here is that if a large swarm of users try to go for the gold and grab data, the available bandwidth at the ISP and possibly some backbones, may start to dry up because of the large amounts of downloading. Now I don't think any ISP is dumb enough not to have atleast some sort of redundancy plan, but I do know that enough ISPs sucking at the teet of the backbone providers can take down access to a large number of people.

[mr_dimsum]

Here's another thought too. With DVD, it was said to be vastly superior to VHS, would not detiorate as fast, and had much better picture quality as well that was visible in standard definition television. With Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, to see some differences among these on a normal television would be difficult. So for the general population to really get a grasp of how this new technology benefits them, they must be able to see a clear difference in quality that justifies killing off their DVD collection, and paying a premium for essentially the same film available for dollars and dollars less. The problem is, most people will not think much of the difference in quality because the general population do not carry high-definition television sets that would benefit from this. So in order for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to be widely accepted as DVD, I think we must see a big momentum shift in the adoption rate of HDTV's first.