Call it karma. Call it odds. For the first time since Sony and Philips released the CD way back in 1982, Sony is finally one with the format that's come out on top: Blu-ray.
Sony jointly developed Blu-ray. The company--again with Pioneer--first showed the technology that evolved into Blu-ray back in 2000.
And Sony joined with nine other consumer electronics companies to formally introduce Blu-ray in 2002.
But Blu-ray stands tall amidst a heap of Sony format misstarts. Remember these?
1975: BetaMax (lost to VHS). The winning VHS tape is on top:
1991: MiniDisc (never took off due to expense, bulk). Here's what one looked like:
1993: Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (Dolby and DTS were already in the market, and SDDS ceased operation in 2002)
1998: Memory Stick (another flash memory format, Memory Stick is still prevalent in Sony point-and-shoot cameras, but never gained traction elsewhere due to the more established and more popular Secure Digital card and CompactFlash card formats.) Here's one:
1998: HiFD (High Capacity Floppy Discs held 150MB of data, but CD-Rs were more capacious at 650MB, and they quickly took over)
1999: Super Audio CD (developed with Philips as the successor to audio CD, but stalled in a format war of its own with DVD Audio)
2004: Universal Media Disc (designed for Playstation Portable, this mini optical disc could hold 1.8GB of data. But it held limited appeal, and flash media proved capable of storing content as needed).
2004: Hi-MD (a 1GB version of the Mini-Disc, Hi-MD was too little, too late)
1 comment:
The top tape is actually a Betacam Large-size cassette. The VHS is on lower right.
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