Does this mean the end of the HD-DVD wars?

We here at techRivet had previously predicted that the High Definition DVD wars would end with the opposite result, a victory for HD-DVD.  Primarily because of the decision of the adult industry to produce their titles in HD-DVD format exclusively.

Here: HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: it's all over.

And then we had some little egg on our face as we had to retract part of that broad statement when Sony began to offer support to the adult industry later in the year.

Here: Sony wises up and listens to techRivet

Now Warner Brothers has stopped straddling the format divide and put both feet on the Blu-Ray bus Toshiba is going to need a near miracle to win the war.  There are a bunch of VPs, Executive VPs and  C-level folks over at Toshiba that are not getting very much sleep tonight.

Toshiba Corp. late Friday said it was 'quite surprised' by Warner Bros.' decision to adopt Sony Corp.'s (NYSE:SNE) Blu-ray disc format instead of Toshiba's HD DVD.

eh...no longer satisfied with a little two eggs over easy on our face, we now have a full omelette with all the trimmings...mmmmmm omelettes, brb.

Remember "Total Recall", the sci-fi movie from 1990?  Great movie, Arnie was at the peak of his action hero era, Sharon Stone was Hot, Michael Ironside was bad, lot's of gratuitous violence.

yeah...coool.

Well the opening scene had Sharon and Arnie eating breakfast and the entire wall of their dining area was a television.  They turned on and off parts of it.  Now it's a television, now it's a tranquil screensaver (wallsaver?).

Well Sony is just about to come out with an ultra thin TV.

The next generation television has a screen with a thickness of just three millimeters (0.12 inches), which was made possible because the organic display is self-luminescent and does not require a backlighting.

[linky]

So...less than a quarter inch thick.  You could tile your wall with these things and voila', life imitates art.  Of course they're like $2000 per right now, but that price will come down.

Oh...ok, only because you asked.  CHICK FIGHT!

They mock the rivet, then they do what we tell them to:

Way back in January we warned Sony that they were in danger of losing the high definition format war: HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray: it's all over.

Now they have embraced the adult film industry: [linky]

The HD DVD high-definition movie format may have the lead in the U.S. porn industry, but Japanese adult film makers have turned decisively to Blu-ray Disc, breathing new life into its bid to replace DVDs as the disc of choice for home movies.

Sony Corp. has started offering more technical support to the adult film industry in Japan, movie makers said at the Adult Treasure Expo 2007 in Chiba, Japan, and the problem of finding companies to mass produce their movies appears to be over.

This is a very interesting development. We here at techRivet.com officially retract our previous statement of the demise of the Blu-Ray format.

The reports of Blu-Ray's death have been greatly exaggerated.

I've now had the discussion a few times over the last few months - will MS as the computing standard be toppled any time soon - and so I figure it's worth talking about here.

The answer is - it is the standard and will continue to be so for at least the next 10-15 years. The reason being that there is a whole generation of IT folks who have been raised on MS software. They know it, they can hire for it and their corporate users are comfortable with it. Is it perfect? Nope but it works and to paraphrase Ross Perot - no one will get fired supporting MS software. Sorry Linux and Apple fans - MS has one. Sorry Google fans - there's no support infrastructure for Google. Now a generation from now things can change but that's a lot of lifetimes in terms of how technology works.

Now the home front is an entirely different battle - as computing morphs into the CE realm the OS fades into the background. Seriously who cares or knows what OS is running their home stereo? Or their TV? With the launch of Apple TV and XBOX 360 computing is evolving more and more into devices where functionality - ie. what can i do with this device - drives the usage decision not the OS. And on the home front no one knows who's going to win. But don't count MS out with the success of XBOX 360 - and it has won the gen 3 advanced console game don't let PS3 fans tell you otherwise - MS has an interesting hedge on the next generation of computing.