How Long before Blu-ray is Considered an HD DVD?

And before I begin I am making no assumptions in this thread about Blu-ray failing like HD DVD, or any of that nonsense. What I am talking about is purely of names and identities.

Let’s face it, the average consumer doesn’t take to new names all that often. Sure, DVD wasn’t reverted back to being called VHS, or disc VHS or anything like that, but VHS also wasn’t a disc. DVD shared very few similarities with it’s bulky step cousin twice removed; VHS. Blu-ray, on the other hand does almost the exact same things as DVD only better, and in High Definition. Now that HD DVD is dead, how long will it be before consumers coin the term off onto the victor: Blu-ray?

Before you shout me down pleading to others of my ignorance on the matter you should know that we already saw this type of thing happening even before the format war was over. For those that recall, visitors to Google’s search engine were constantly looking up HD DVD as opposed to Blu-ray, despite Blu-ray maintaining a lead on the sales front (LINK). It makes sense that the name is more popular than Blu-ray because consumers generally know what Blu-ray is; a DVD with high definition content on it, i.e. an HD DVD. Technical garble aside, both are discs that play movies/hold content only one does it in HD. Even the U.S. Government did this in the recent court filings against Blu-ray when they listed in the papers: HD DVD players (e.g. Blu-ray disc players) (LINK).

So is this Blu-ray’s fate? Two, three, five years down the road are we going to be calling them HD DVDs again, despite them really being Blu-rays? I know a lot of you probably think this is inconceivable, but is it really? Consumers (myself included by the way) have definitely done stupider things and, to be perfectly honest, do we even need the Blu-ray name? The war is over. Fancy names aside if you were to look at a Blu-ray disc and a DVD would you notice any real differences in them? I doubt it…

I’m Sick of Vista Complaints

Anybody who buys an OS and expects it to be as stable as the last iteration is an idiot. I mean no personal attacks on anybody but it’s true, and I won’t be easy on anybody who thinks that. It’s the 21st century, there is no reason why people should expect such things.

Do you expect a game to ship without bugs?

What about your favorite MMO?

So why did you all expect Vista, on day one, to be so f-ing great? Who cares if Microsoft told you that it was, you were a sheep lured into a wolves den then. Game companies hype their games the same exact way. Anybody who knows anything about computers should know this. Hell, when Vista came out I held off on buying it for about 8 months because I knew that it was not going to run properly with every game or piece of hardware and you know what? I was right! Like every OS that preceded Vista it did not work with every game or piece of hardware. However, now, after a year it works great for my gaming PC.

Bottom line is that people expected Vista to be the “wonder OS” to save them from their computer troubles, which is perhaps Microsoft’s fault for hyping it too much. I’ll be straight about this 100%, there was no fucking way that every driver for every hardware/software/etc. was going to be available on Vista’s release. There were just damn many things for the Windows platform, which is actually part of the allure of the Windows-based system.

The whole sticker thing is a different issue altogether, and Microsoft should definitely feel some repercussions for it. That said, however, I am so sick of hearing people complain about Vista.

“Ohhh Vista won’t do this.”

“My Vista is so slow compared to XP.”

That’s the price of change and expansion! Sure XP was a stable OS, but it’s old. It had two SPs under it’s belt with numerous upgrades and fixes before that. It did not come out as the “wonder OS”, although Windows 2000, and ME definitely helped XP’s image. Vista, on the other hand, was offering something truly new to the Windows platform since Windows 95. It was birthed out of the legacy that XP built and when it wasn’t as fully functional on day one as XP was at four years people through temper tantrums, like bloody school children. Well guess what? Vista is better than XP, if for nothing else than the mere fact that it’s change and it’s different.

Truth be told, technology advances differently from most other things. When a new technology that is replacing something else comes out it is usually not as good as it’s predecessor. Actually sometimes it can seem downright horrid in comparison. What people don’t realize is that the predecessor is a base for the new technology, a goal for the designers to bring it up to that level. Usually this comes fairly quickly and then they are able to build upon it to make it even better, something that was impossible with the previous technology. XP was great, but, as a technological society, we could not use it forever. Vista is out now, and it will eventually become better. . .

Oh, and for those who are waiting for Microsoft’s rumoured 2009 OS to come out, I wouldn’t hold my breath. For one, that’s probably gonna get delayed by at least a year. Second, and this one is really my main point, the next OS will not be a “wonder” OS on release either. Expect it to ship with the same shitty bugs that Vista and XP were shipped with. . .

Welcome to the 21st century.