| Sony-led Blu-ray format will succeed in replacing DVD as the next-generation disc. The irony, however, is that by the time consumers are ready to switch digital media may be far more important than physical media. More within...Independent technology and market research company Forrester Research has predicted victory for Blu-ray in the next-generation DVD format wars. Unfortunately for consumers, however, the firm believes that the battle will not end that quickly.
Blu-ray's multi-use functionality for movies, computers and games gives it the edge over the Toshiba-led HD DVD camp. Indeed, the inclusion of Blu-ray in Sony's PlayStation 3 could be a big factor, and it's largely for that reason that Paramount recently decided to endorse Blu-ray when the movie studio had formerly only backed HD DVD. In addition, the Blu-ray format offers greater storage capacity and uses the familiar Java for its interactive features. And although manufacturing costs for Blu-ray will be slightly greater than HD DVD initially, the industry is working on ways to bring down those costs quickly.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates echoed similar sentiments in a speech given recently at Howard University in Washington D.C.—perhaps that is also why MS has decided to stay with DVD-9 for the Xbox 360.
"The home activity of the future will be very digital, we actually call it the digital lifestyle," he said. "Your music, of course, is already moving away from being on a physical media to just being on a hard disk or streamed across the Internet. My daughter, who's 9, asked me as we went into a record store what a record was, and, of course, she's never seen a record, and five years from now people will say what's a CD, why did you have to go to the case and open something up and you couldn't sequence it your own playlist way; that will be a thing of the past."
Gates continued, "Likewise, even for videos that will happen. The format that's under discussion right now, HD versus Blu-ray, that's simply the last physical format we'll ever have. Even videos in the future will either be on a disk in your pocket or over the Internet and therefore far more convenient for you. You can organize things the way you want and it will show up on all these different devices." | 
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