If there was ever a time to feel sorry for a corporate titan like Sony (NYSE:SNE) it may have been last month when rival movie studios announced that they would be supporting Toshiba's HD-DVD technology in upcoming releases over the promising Blu-ray technology that Sony had been championing.
It's not as though you could blame Viacom (NYSE:VIA), Vivendi (NYSE:V), and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) for siding with HD-DVD. The alternative would have helped vindicate a consortium led by a studio adversary in Sony. While others such as Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) were part of the Blu-ray disc design team, it's Sony's name that always seems to come first, and that brings back painful memories. See, it was Sony's Betamax that wound up on the wrong side of the velvet rope when the public sided with the VHS videocassette format instead.
But Sony isn't alone anymore in trying to promote Blu-ray over HD-DVD as the eventual replacement for the popular DVD standard. This week Disney (NYSE:DIS) lined up on Sony's side when it announced that it would be supporting Blu-ray.
Blu-ray is superior to HD-DVD, given its greater storage capacity. Yet we all know that technological advances are dictated by popular opinion -- not a glossy spec sheet. That's why the two most important things working in Blu-ray's favor are Disney's endorsement and Sony's decision to buy the MGM movie library earlier this year.
Content carries a lot of weight. Yet eventually, once one platform emerges victorious, all of the studios stand to gain from the migration. With consumers rebuilding their video collections with older classics on the newest standard, incremental sales will reward the purveyors of content.
So don't feel bad for Sony. Blu-ray has a good shot at making it. And, as you can see, given Sony's girth these days (despite its stateside failure with Betamax), the future always forgives the key bearers of content.
Was Disney right to back Blu-ray? Should it have joined the others last month on the HD-DVD bandwagon? Which studio do you think has the most valuable content library? All this and more -- in the Disney discussion board. Only on Fool.com.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz knows he will have to overpay to be an early adopter if he chooses between HD-DVD and Blu-ray early. He owns shares of Disney. He is also a member of the Rule Breakers analytical team, seeking out tomorrow's great growth stocks a day early.
