As most people know Blu-Ray won the HD disc war, effectively when Warner Bros. jumped ship from the Toshiba led HD-DVD format to the Sony-Matsushita led Blu_Ray format. A few weeks later (Jan 2008) Toshiba effectively bowed out of the battle, by releasing a statement effectively ending HD-DVD media and hardware production.
New Blu-Ray Standard: I cunningly used this snippet of information to convince one of my mates a former CGO employee to purchase a Playstation 3. What a lot of people aren't aware of is that Blu-Ray recently updated its format, and older generation Blu-Ray players are not compatible with the new features available in the revised Blu-Ray format (effectively Blu-Ray v2).
However the new Blu-ray players and the PS3 are network updateable (is that even a word) are therefore able to cope with the new BR v2 format. This in my opinion makes the PS3 the best Blu-Ray player on the market, as it is future proof with the software updates and is also pretty good value for money at £300. It also has a pretty good side feature in that it is able to play games! Anyway this resulted in Sony releasing an updated firmware earlier in the week which in effect gave all PS3 owners with the latest update BR v2 (aka Blu-Ray-LIVE) support. This new support allows the users to do various things such as: Download Additional content, access Blu-Ray disc specific websites etc etc...
This is all well and good, but what will Microsoft do about this? The XBox 360 and the PS3 have been competing for the runners up prize in the next-gen gaming crown for a year or so now (the Wii has beaten both consoles by a square mile to be the most popular next gen gaming console), Microsoft XBox backed the HD-DVD addon drive to support HD Discs however with Blu-Ray winning the HD disc war, Sony have in effect played there trump card! What will Microsoft do next:
1. Will they licence Blu-Ray technology? Will Sony let them (Sony being a founding partner in Blu-Ray)?
2. Will they go back Digital Downloads?
I think the latter; With the Xbox there is one major benefit over every other console and that is the superb XBox Live! I look in awe at some of my mates who have this fantastic portal for downloading game demos, videos etc... and lets be honest the PSN network doesnt square up! I think Microsoft will try to use this portal advantage to push Digital Downloads as the next big-thing to completely replace HD-purchased media. I am not the only one of this opinion many others also believe MS will go this route. Here are a couple of the advantages / disadvantages of Digital Downloads to HD-Media:
1. Blu-Ray provide a physical item you can purchase and can easily share swap borrow etc.. With Digital Downloads and the inevitable DRM which will accompany it can you do this sharing?
2. With a Blu-Ray disc if you scratch it, it could mean you have to repurchase the title. With Dig. Downloads you could in essence re-download the video (possibly for free).
But the real winner in this will in essence be the price in my opinion. If the studios release digital downloading at a reasonable price say £7 for a new release, and £5 for an older one, than surely the battle will be won by once pricing the other out of the market. But hey only time will tell.