And there's the fact that the cheaper, "good enough" system always wins, be it transport, LAN, Government or religion.
this is why a heavy-duty core will always lose...by definition, it mustThis is an excerpt from one of Marshall's posts to the X.400 discussion mailing list (ironically delivered over SMTP) explaining why the X.400 list was being delivered over SMTP.
offer services which are of interest to only a subset of its users and
yet all users are impacted by them... /mtr
Sony and Toshiba, neither renowned for their openess and standards adherence, though they love to control them, and the revenues that result. Toshiba is the provenance of CSS, the beloved content scrambling system that proved how vulnerable such systems are.
Sony backs Blu-Ray and Toshiba HD DVD.
Given the typical VHS-Betamax intransigence of these actors others have stepped in, with no better motive one suspects, to mitigate the problem.
LG has a triple-standard player (the two in question and the legacy DVD), while Warner Bros Studios are proposing a triple standard disc.
Of course the first question to everyone's lips is not, "How did it come to this?" but rather, "Will you license this technology to other manufacturers/studios?"
The consumer, first faced with a choice of two standards, buy either (or both, given prices fall this gives you more of a brand choice than the LG solution) and discs appropriate to your standards choice. Given the new long tail environment of on-line sales we can perhaps elide over the issue for vendors of stocking two standards on limited shelves.
With the development of a multi-HD player and a multi-HD disc, the choice of player increases to three, but even those with one of the two original choices now have a second option in the discs they buy. I look forward to playing a multi-HD disc in the multi-HD player, which standard will it or I select?
Are we learning yet?
Once again, Intellectual Property isn't benefitting anyone, it may eventually benfit one of the small coterie of large players, but presently their self-interest completely trumps the customers interest in a simple, interoperable system that allows them to buy or borrow a disc from a library or a friend and have it work on their choice of player from a range of manufacturers.
But, despite lip-service to the notion of the customer as king, and competition and the market-place's power to choose, these consortia of vendors will continue to try and hedge their bets, avoid risk, and guarantee their returns via this demonstrably damaging and stupid practice and process of competition at the infrastructural layer of entertainment systems, the media and recording standard.
One must marvel at either the magnitude of their selfishness, greed or stupidity, or maybe its the scale of the returns that justify this incredible public stupidity, one that a manufacturer and a content producer have the resources and motivation to attempt to mitigate. Not solve, mitigate.
Again, the comfortable incumbents of consumer electronics standards setting are wasting our time and money with a futile battle that we, the customer, will eventually decide as we have in every single other such stoush. We did with Ethernet, VHS, audio cassette, etc. etc. etc.
What I'd like to see is us, the consumer and our representatives, create an open standard for HD media, one without licensing fees of any kind. Then I think we'd see a real market operate, and real companies and capitalists in it, not cowering incumbents who, like Telstra and Telecom, want their investments "guaranteed" along with their rate of return.
The HD debacle is another example where the tension and divergence between the motives of the producer and consumer are such that the consumer needs to co-ordinate to wrest control and conflict from the hands of the comfortable incumbents and into the open.