Optical disc format wars
Format wars are nothing new in the world of computing. Ever since the days of competing buses, different manufacturers and groups have been developing and evangelising mostly incompatible technologies which solve the same group of problems.
The most recent format wars have been and are currently being fought in the area of recordable optical discs. During the CD days, there were some fairly esoteric formats relating to specialised photo and video CDs, but many consumers were unaware of these formats. There were CD-R and CD-RW discs, and that was it.
However, when recordable DVD started being developed, two distinct groups of manufacturers formed, each claiming to have developed a superior version of the next generation of optical disc. One was DVD-R (minus R), developed by Pioneer and supported by the DVD Forum. In many ways, this was an extension of CD-R, especially in naming. The other was DVD+R (plus R), developed by the DVD+RW Alliance. At first, customers were confused as to which format to use, and demanded a single format. Many DVD players and recorders took advantage of this by supporting both formats, as well as the fairly rare DVD-RAM, making most of the fighting and egotistic behaviour by both sides unnecessary and irrelevant.
As if that wasn’t enough, the format wars have been ignited yet again with the release of the next generation of optical discs. This time, the formats are HD DVD and Blu-ray, and are not just limited to the recordable versions of the discs as with DVDs (both plus and minus recordable DVDs finalise to the same format) - these two formats are incompatible even for playback. HD DVD is developed by Toshiba while Blu-ray is developed by Sony, each with its corporate partners. Each purports to be better than the other, but not much can be said at the moment owing to the rarity of players and titles on these discs.
Right now, it’s not possible to say which format will eventually win the war, although Microsoft’s support of the HD DVD format for Windows and the Xbox 360 means that it’ll make significant inroads into the computing and gaming markets. Either way, let’s hope for the public’s sake that the companies get this mess sorted out soon so that we can all know once and for all which players, recorders and discs to buy.