How Blu-Ray Won The Battle, But Will Lose The War
Written By: Myattus Galacticus, Editor-in -Chief of Gamecherry.com

 Sony Corp. has seemingly won the format wars with the introduction and acceptance of the Blu-Ray DVD. It was obvious from the beginning of the "format war" that Sony would be the victor. Their product had higher data capacity than their rival Toshiba's HD-DVD, was backed by their movie and recording production companies, and made it the de facto optical drive in everyone of it's highly anticipated video game console, the Playstation 3.
Readily available, supported by everyone, and incorporated into a trusted name brand, consumers wisely adopted the better choice in digital formats. For the time being that is.
   Blu-Ray has indeed made the proliferation into the digital video market but has yet to permeate it the same way DVD has. Introduced only a little more than a year ago, the thinking is that as time goes by wide acceptance coupled with cheaper production costs will catapult Blu-Ray as the High Definition standard just as the Compact Disc overtook cassette tape in the early nineties. This thinking makes complete and total sense, but is far too short sighted.
With-in five to ten years Blu-Ray will be forgotten. Just a memory of old technology, perhaps only remembered as an answer to a Trivial Persuit question. How can this technology be deemed "doomed" so short into it's life cycle? History.
   In 1986, Philips introduced the Compact Disc to the consumer market. The format required users to buy a different component to play it than cassettes and added a price premium to the new technology. People flocked to it not because CD's look cool hanging from your rear-view mirror but because it offered clear digital continuous sound and track selection, things the cassette could not do. The same happened with the DVD. VHS, being secluded to yard sales and swap meets has managed to survive as the recording format for camcorders, though more and more manufacturers have now opted for memory cards, recordable DVD, and HDD formats. This is the fate of the Blu-Ray disc. Don't believe?
   What brand of personal CD player do you currently take with you when you leave the house? The vast majority of consumers have left their personal cd players behind in favor of an iPod or Zune or one of the many other digital media players available. Sure, people still buy cd's, but most get downloaded into an iPod and put on a shelf. The optical disc has barely any life left to it.
   As NAND Flash becomes cheaper, memory cards and solid state drives will increase in capacity and decrease in size, making them the format of the foreseeable future. It is already possible to download media from online outlets like The Apple iStore, Amazon.com, and the hundreds of others from your home pc. Blockbuster, the former leader in the movie rental industry has already committed to installing downloadable movie kiosks in retail outlets to combat Netflix's ever increasing dominance of the market. Major cable providers like Comcast, The Dish Network, and Direct TV are already trumpeting on-demand media that downloads to your cable box. Even video game console manufacturers like Microsoft and Sony have included on-demand media as integral parts of their online services. It's quick, it's easy and the majority of consumers already have the equipment installed in their homes to access it.
   The problem is, people like the tangible. They want to be able to touch the movie they bought, bring it to a friends house and watch it, and resell it when they no longer want it. Optical discs facilitate this need and thus their foot-hold on popularity.
   NAND Flash whether in memory card or solid state drive form can and will act in the same way with greater flexibility, versatility, and capacity. The Blockbuster kiosk example or something very similar will become the model for media delivery and retention. A consumer could download media of any kind to a flash card, choose a pre-set length of time or views for a rental or buy the media out-right for use on the player of their choice. An ID numbering system would have to be instituted to allow the user to play his/her media on whomever's system they like but for copyright reasons, only download the media to systems they own with a corresponding ID number. This new "floatable" media can be of any size, format, or resolution the consumer decides, thus making obsolete the confines of the optical disc.
   Retailers like BestBuy, Target, and Wal-Mart will save not only on valuable floor space, replacing aisles of CD's and DVD's with a few kiosks but, would also save on the biggest expenditure in retail - shipping and warehousing. Gone would be the millions of gallons of fuel need to bring the discs to market each year, replaced by a fiber optic delivery system. Manufacturers would save billions of dollars on packaging costs and shipping as-well, passing the savings on to the consumer. Add in that the user need only buy a high capacity flash card/drive once and simply re-use it, having already watched and/or downloaded the media into their systems.
   The impact on the environment would be tremendous, as natural resources are retained and harmful chemicals produced by/for the production process would be dissipated.
   We have seen the future and it does not include Blu-Ray or any other optical disc.