Why HD-DVD And Blu-Ray Are (Strategically) Obsolete

So...should you care about the so-called HD-DVD/Blu-ray standards war?

No.

Why not? Because it won't make a bit of difference to the larger outcomes players along the value chain realize - whether content, hardware, distribution, etc. In fact, it's just a waste of your time - though it's geekily sexy, from an economic pov, these competitive dynamics are already thoroughly obsolete.

Standards wars with heavy fixed costs and closed platforms are deeply dominated - and deeply toxic. Today's economics are vastly different - and it's exactly vaporizing closed platforms and fixed costs that's where the real value is.

If these guys were really interested in revolutionizing their creaking, industrial-era business designs, they'd be playing very different games; they'd be competing through openness and hyperefficiency, not coercion and control.

But they're not - they're just interested in propping up dead business models with marginal productivity gains from increasingly onerous capital investments. And that, of course, is a sucker's bet.

So until the game changes - ignore it. It's just noise, because even if it earns video players a few more years of marginal profitability, it certainly won't pull them out of deep, enduring strategy decay.

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