Another HD format war - this time over enterprise storage
While the format war being waged between Blu-ray and HD-DVD has focused on consumer applications, there's another less publicised battle being fought over the use of high-definition discs as enterprise storage devices.
Businesses have a growing need to reliably archive massive amounts of information and both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are once again competing for a share in this lucrative market.
There are similar arguments to the ones constraining the consumer market with Blu-ray touting its greater capacity while HD-DVD points out that its components and software are generally less expensive.
It might turn out to be wasted effort though as, while HD discs can offer up to 30GB storage, the cost of hard drive storage is far less for considerably more storage space – raising questions over the practicality of optical storage. And the lack of PCs and notebooks equipped to read and write high-definition discs is another stumbling block.
With a growing reliance on hard drive storage and an increase in network distribution, this is one war that could be over before it starts – if only the consumer market could be the same.
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