And this time the better format won right? Unlike Betamax which I hadn’t realised was actually invented 2 years before VHS and it’s fizzle-out was basically because of Sony patents.
Also, the thing about Betamax having superior quality is a bit overblown, while Betamax at speed 1 (or A, I don't remember what it was called) DID have better quality, nobody used it! (and Sony discontinued quite quickly, favouring speed 2 and 3) since the recording time was so low.
(also the professional Betamax format is a completely different beast from the consumer one, at some point it switched to being digital)
LGR did an Oddware video about it a few years back: https://youtu.be/CzwtCBj5jEs
Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--and failed hard (Part 1) - https://youtu.be/FyKRubB5N60
Why Sony's Beta Videotape System Failed--Part 2 - https://youtu.be/v019trxfcmg
The VHS cassette was more clever than Beta - https://youtu.be/hWl9Wux7iVY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive...
https://medium.com/swlh/vhs-vs-beta-the-story-of-the-origina...
Can't say Blu-Ray won with a resounding success neither… possibly because of Sony patents.
DVDs were still heavily used as compared to Blu-Ray, because people buying Blue-Rays were mostly people who had a PlayStation that could read them.
And a few years later, streaming services probably pushed the idea of buying a movie on a physical media a bit out of the window anyway.
Also, a bunch of old movies get restored in HD and released on streaming services only. First example that comes to mind is the classic 1993 comedy Look Who's Talking Now.
Adding insult to injury, a bunch of old movies get remastered physical releases... on DVD only. That's right. SD content encoded with a 30 year old codec.
So if I want to watch a movie from my childhood in HD, more often than not my only legal course of action is to subscribe to a streaming service.
Very sad, really.
And the market for discs isn't what it used to be. The long tail seems nonexistent now, it's a shame old remasters aren't coming through it any more. The last one I bought was the Star Trek TNG remaster, which was on blu-ray (and looked fantastic)
Blurays were more hardy and required less scratch fix buffing. I think they had an extra layer on it.
Were there any other differences between the two?
Bluray menus are Java, and HD-DVDs' are JavaScript/XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Content
HD-DVD uses Microsoft's WMV3/VC-1. Bluray (non-UHD) supports both AVC (h.264) and VC-1, but AVC is more common https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_H.264_and_VC-1
The differences between the two standard were more interesting when it came to sound formats. HD-DVD had mandatory support for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD (allowing the audio on a disc to use these without a fallback). Blu-ray on the other hand supported a higher max. bitrate for DTS-HD Master Audio.
TIL! http://www.dvdforum.org/images/Forum_HD_DVD_Universal_24.pdf...