Poor Sony
News today hints that Blu-ray Disc (BD), the next-generation DVD format developed by Sony and others, including Hewlett-Packard
Unfortunately a dearth of content could leave BD dead in the water, putting us at the mercy of HD-DVD, the brainchild of Toshiba and NEC. While superior to current DVD, HD-DVD holds 30-45% less data than Blu-ray. Moreover, compatible devices don't even exist yet. That's why the recent announcements of upcoming HD-DVD releases from the movie units of Viacom
This Fool, at least, hopes Blu-ray wins the day. Since Sony owns its own movie studio, it's got a lot of heft in the market. But in the end, the BD consortium members may all have to do some heavy lifting. If they can afford to drop the prices on their expensive set-top boxes -- currently costing upwards of $3,000 -- they might just gain enough marketshare to change the movie biz's mind.
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Seth Jayson is waiting for Blu-ray to hit the clearance bin. At the time of publication, he had positions in no company mentioned. View his stock holdings and Fool profile here. Fool rules are here.