DVD Is Dead

The DVD may have died this week.

Walmart is now selling Blu-Ray high-definition optical disk players for $68 in the U. S. Sure, plain old DVD players are cheaper still, but why would you buy one? Blu-Ray players can be used with your old DVD collection just fine and will line-double and up-shift your old disks a bit so they’ll look nice (but not as nice as 1080p Blu-Ray) on your new LCD or plasma TV. So unless the Blu-Ray can’t connect to your old TV for some reason, I can’t imagine why anyone would buy the old standard.

These things happen: Moore’s Law, remember? But in this case it feels to me like […]

Is Blu-Ray a Failure?

blu_ray_300pxThere was a minor flap in tech news last week when the CEO of Activision, a huge video game company, called on Sony to drop the price of its PlayStation 3 game console, suggesting that if Sony didn’t follow this advice Activision would consider withdrawing support for the game platform altogether.  I hardly expect Activision to withdraw its PS3 support, nor do I expect Sony to dramatically reduce the price of systems that have already effectively dropped 20 percent or more in Sony’s top market, the U.S., because of the weak dollar. To the astonishment of hard-core gamers, in fact, I’d suggest that this little drama has nothing to do with game sales or games […]