What If....

So many events are determined by the smallest of factors. The smallest push from one direction sends fates tumbling in the other. I've thought about this before, but this week's show reminded me of what I had been wanting to say for a while.

So Blu-ray won the format wars. Sony finally beat the odds and over came their Beta Max, Mini Disc, and UMD trends. It's easy to have seen the outcome when you look back on it. The Playstation 3 was the determining factor for Blu-ray winning out. It didn't matter which movie companies were behind which. It didn't matter about storage capacity or disc cost. What mattered most was ease and cost for the consumer to adopt the format. I'm fine with Blu-ray winning out. I didn't own a bunch of HD-DVD movies or the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. But I can't help but feel that HD-DVD handed over the match when they let the 360 come out without HD-DVD built in. Think about it, had Microsoft's system come out with the originally planned HD-DVD drive, Blu-ray wouldn't have stood a chance against that kind of a head start.

The only problems I could have forseen were hardware issues, but the XB360 had enough problems anyways, what would have been a few more? I just thought it was kinda funny if you think that the HD format wars was decided basically lost by the company who was supposed to be supporting it.

David