If you’re old enough to remember the Betamax fiasco in the 80’s then you may recall how one technology sometimes just tips the right way and the momentum is all it takes to put the final nail in the coffin. However, with Betamax, Sony didn’t give up until well into the early 2000’s. In fact there are still some news outlets out there who are still relying on Betacams I’m sure.

Lucky for us, Toshiba decided to throw in the towel relatively early this time. But is this really good for the consumer?

Sure, Blu-Ray is arguably the superior format. After all, it does have more storage space per disc. But what do you suppose will happen now that Sony holds so many cards?

Time will tell but I will guarantee that the price of the Blu-Ray Disc will almost certainly go up over the next few months. Mark my words. As a matter of fact, Sony was wanting to charge $40-45 per movie but had to compete with the lower priced HD-DVD’s up to this point. But that competition is no more so who’s to stop them from charging what they want?

I will say, however, that without this whole “format war” continuing on it should make Blu-Ray come down in price at least from a hardware standpoint since so many people who’ve been “on the fence” can finally purchase the winning hardware. I think I’m still going to stick with good old regular DVD for now and we’ll see what Sony does with this win.

Wow Sony, you finally did it. It only took Betamax, DAT, Minidisc, Memory Stick, etc. etc. to finally win a format war!

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