It is very common for the fights to get dirty in the business circles, but hacking of the official site of a firm and being directed to its competitor’s website, is much of a humiliation.
Last weekend, the official site for Blu-ray (http://www.blu-raydisc.com) was hacked and re-directed to the official HD DVD (http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com) site. This indeed was very embarrassing for the Blu-ray manufacturers as the site was hacked at the peak business hours.
It is noticeable that Blu-ray and HD DVD have been locking horns in a fight to become the high-definition successor to the DVD.
It has not yet been confirmed that who was responsible for the act, but there are rumors that the HD DVD Group might have paid for a hacker to do the job. Although, the probability of this happening is very less, but it can’t also be out rightly rejected.
Both camps have been particularly aggressive this holiday season, offering a variety of discounts, free movies, and other incentives to convince consumers to back a particular format. Some HD DVD players were available for a take away price of $98 at Wal-Mart, while $199 was a more common low price. Blu-ray Disc player makers also cut their prices, with some selling the devices for less than $299.
The main problem with both the products is that the content available on one format is exclusive for that one, and is not available in the other. Discs won’t also play on other machines except for dual-format players, which are very expensive.
The key to deciding the winner in this game is the movie studios, which are one of the major users for these when their movies are released in DVDs.
Till now, Blu-ray discs held the momentum with four major studios- Sony, MGM, Walt Disney and Twentieth Century Fox backing the Sony manufactured discs. But recently, Toshiba made
HD DVD turned the tide towards itself when it got the backing of Viacom's VIA Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation DWA. NBC Universal also supports this format of discs.
Time Warner's TWX Warner Bros supports both the formats for the time being, but both the companies are luring it to join them exclusively.
This passionate fight for their product’s promotion shows how much both the companies believe in the quality of their products. Customers are also happy as they are able to get these products at very cheap prices. With the holiday season coming to an end the companies are expected to calm down a bit, otherwise the cases like site hacking will become more common and fight will keep getting dirtier.
Till December 1st, including the video game consoles, 2.7 million Blu-ray Disc players were sold whereas 750 thousand HD DVD players were sold in America.
It doesn't matter whether it
It doesn't matter whether it was HD-DVD Propaganda group or a fanboy, because it still smacks of desperation. Blu-ray is thumping HD-DVD and that's the reality.