No, this isn’t an entry about adopting babies! The phrase early adopter commonly refers to persons who’re enthusiasts buying into technologies that are newly emerging and before they become mainstream. Early adoption has its benefits; you get to play with the newest stuff, mingle with like-minded enthusiasts, and best of all, enjoy the online ‘wars’ when there’s another competing early technology.
The one I’m referring to is none other than the recently-ended high-def format war. What was that about? Well, in a nutshell, for the last 2 years, there’s been two competing formats for the distribution of pre-recorded high-definition entertainment: Blu-ray, and HD DVD. Hollywood studios were divided into both camps or choosing to be aligned to neither, and several changed sides in the 2 years too. There’s been many major ‘events’ and turning points throughout, but the absence of a clear winner was hurting mass consumer adoption of one standard. i.e. who’d like to spend thousands of dollars buying new media for one format only to see the other format eventually become standard?
What’s been especially fun though has been watching the war online. Gamers, movie-lovers and online advocacy groups have all taken sides and gotten involved. In fact, in order to stop the flaming and arguments from spilling into the forums where participants had no desire to bicker, several web sites even have Smackdown forums where folks went specifically to fight. I don’t enjoy bickering and I haven’t flamed since my Usenet days in 1993. But it’s nonetheless fun to watch from a spectator’s point of view. There’s wit, sarcasm, the usual cussing, scrutinization of press-releases and sales data, and Nostradamus-like predictions on who’d win (or lose).
All that said, the format war eventually reached its closure early this week when the HD DVD format capitulated with Toshiba, the forerunner leading the format, announced that in light of recent developments in the war, they’re stopping production of hardware for their format. All that’s good news for consumers, since mass adoption can now properly begin with the format that’s emerged the winner. The Smackdown forums are now slowly winding down in activity too since there isn’t much to smack the other fellow about now. But if you’d like to see what the fuss was about, here’s a good place to start. To get to the most fun stuff though you’d have to backtrack from around the Christmas week from last year.:)
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