Sony now has the backing of Disney, and will possibly start releasing movies on Blu-Ray format as soon as early 2006. However, Disney is pretty much saying that if HD (developed by Toshiba) turns out to the dominant technology then they reserve the right to release their movies on HD format.
So what Disney is telling Sony is that Disney is going with the winner of the format wars.
Sony still has a long way to go in order to make their Blu-Ray the dominant technology, but they are well on their way to winning the battle. Sony now has the backing of Disney and MGM, and is counting on 20th Century Fox to join the team. This would give Sony the backing of studios that combined account for 47% of the DVD sales in America, edging ahead of Toshiba with New Line Cinema and Time Warner (father company of New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.), Paramount, and Universal which account for 45% of DVD sales.
In my view, this would not be nearly enough to beat out Toshiba. Since the transitional costs of switching to HD discs would be much less than switching to Blu-Ray discs, Toshiba would still have the ultimate advantage; a larger profit margin for disc manufacturers (here’s a good article going really in depth).
Things are bound to change a million times between now and next December, when both technologies are set to hit the market, and I’ll keep you informed of every major development.
No comments:
Post a Comment