With the launch of Samsung Electronics' Blu-ray DVD player due for launch on June 20th, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced that it will make seven titles available on Blu-ray to retail stores on this date to coincide the player launch. Sony will also launch its first PC with a Blu-ray drive on that same day also and has plans to release further titles in coming weeks following the launch.
Unfortunately, for those who think they are ahead with forking out on the Pioneer Blu-ray disc writer for their PC, they will need a HDCP enabled graphics card and monitor before they should even consider obtaining one of these movies.
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Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, said the title rollout will coincide with the first commercially available Blu-ray DVD player from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and a Blu-ray-compatible PC from Sony. The stakes are huge for Sony, which has developed the standard known as Blu-ray, which is to compete against a rival high-definition standard known as HD-DVD that was developed by a group led by Toshiba Corp. |
In a way, having a second competing high definition format may be a good way of pushing down player & media pricing, however for consumers this is like the battle that went on between VHS and Betamax happening all over again. It will be interesting to see which will become the 'New Betamax', if both will live on or if this turns out like the battle between Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio in which neither succeeded in taking over the Audio CD, never mind one format winning.
Source: Reuters - Technology
