My gran was a bit of a technophile and bought a laserdisc player back in the 80s. It had a resolution nearly twice that of VHS and suffered from less degredation of quality over time. It was going to be the next big thing... However, the prices were high, and you couldn't get a recordable version - the result was that VHS came to dominate even though it was a far inferior quality.
Blu-Disc / HD-DVD offer clear benefits in terms of quality, but quality is not the only factor here. Firstly, most people do not currently have a TV capable of seeing a difference. Secondly, a surprising number of non-technophiles I have talked to really don't care that much about quality . Thirdly, in a competition between quality and price, price is pretty important - especially if low price means free from P2P. Finally, is physical storage really the way to go? Imagine how how badly a new high quality audio CD format would have fared if it was released a year or two before iTunes took off.
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Laserdiscs anyone?
My gran was a bit of a technophile and bought a laserdisc player back in the 80s. It had a resolution nearly twice that of VHS and suffered from less degredation of quality over time. It was going to be the next big thing... However, the prices were high, and you couldn't get a recordable version - the result was that VHS came to dominate even though it was a far inferior quality.
Blu-Disc / HD-DVD offer clear benefits in terms of quality, but quality is not the only factor here. Firstly, most people do not currently have a TV capable of seeing a difference. Secondly, a surprising number of non-technophiles I have talked to really don't care that much about quality . Thirdly, in a competition between quality and price, price is pretty important - especially if low price means free from P2P. Finally, is physical storage really the way to go? Imagine how how badly a new high quality audio CD format would have fared if it was released a year or two before iTunes took off.