this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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AI is going to be this eras Betamax, HD-Dvd, or 3d TV glasses. It doesn't do what was promised and nobody gives a shit.
Betamax had better image and sound, but was limited by running time and then VHS doubled down with even lower quality to increase how many hours would fit on a tape. VHS was simply more convenient without being that much lower quality for normal tape length.
HD-DVD was comparable to BluRay and just happened to lose out because the industry won't allow two similar technologies to exist at the same time.
Neither failed to do what they promised. They were both perfectly fine technologies that lost in a competition that only allows a single winner.
BluRay was slightly better if I recall correctly. With the rise in higher definition televisions, people wanted to max out the quality possible, even if most people (still) can’t tell the difference
Blu-ray also had the advantage of PS3 supporting the format without the need for an external disc drive.
@philycheeze @xkbx yes, I think Microslop's fumble of selling the HD DVD drive only as an external add-on really hindered the format
@philycheeze @xkbx I bought one anyway. 10 years later, mind you :p
They’re not necessarily bad, it’s just an extra barrier to entry.
That's not why it won, though. It won because the industry wanted zone restrictions, which only Blu-Ray supported. They suck for the user, but allows the industry to stagger releases in different markets. In reality it just means that I can't get discs of most foreign films, because they won't work in my player.
I'm sure that was a factor, but Blu-ray won because the most popular Blu-ray player practically sold itself
It's hard to say what was the final nail in the coffin, but it is true that Blu-Ray went from underdog to outselling HD-DVD around the time the PlayStation 3 came out. I'm not sure how much those early sales numbers matter, though, because I'm sure both were still miniscule compared to DVD.
When 20th Century Fox dropped support for HD-DVD, they cited superior copy protection as the reason. Lionsgate gave similar sentiment.
When Warner later announced they were dropping HD-DVD, they did cite customer adoption as the reason for their choice, but they also did it right before CES, so I'm pretty sure there were some backroom deals at play as well.
I think the biggest impact of the PlayStation 3 was accelerating adoption of Blu-Ray over DVD. Back when DVD came out, VHS remained a major player for years, until the year there was a DVD player so dirt cheap that everyone who didn't already have a player got one for Christmas.
Nah Blu-ray was significantly better, 50gb capacity vs 30gb
The big plus for HD DVD was it was far cheaper to produce, it didn't need massive retooling for manufacturing.
Not just that, space. BluRays have way more space than DVD's. Remember how many 360 games came with multiple discs? Not a single PS3 game did, unless it was a bonus behind the scenes type thing.
Xbox 360 used DVDs for game discs and could play video DVDs. They "supported" HDDVDs - you needed an addon which had a separate optical drive in it. Unsurprisingly this didn't sell well.
Afaik betamax did not have any porn content, which might have contributed to the sale of VHS systems.
Dude don’t throw Betamax in there, that was a better product than the VHS. AI is just ass.
I was just about to mention porn and how each new format of the past came down to that very same factor.
If AI computers were incredible at making AI porn I bet you they'd be selling a lot better haha
No, I’m sorry. It is very useful and isn’t going away. This threads is either full of Luddites or disingenuous people.
I have friends who are computer engineers and they say that it does a pretty good job of generating code, but that's not a general population use case. For most people, AI is a nearly useless product. It makes Google searches worse. It makes your phone voice assistant worse. It's not as good as human artists. And it's mostly used to create dumbass posts on Reddit to farm engagement. In my life, AI has not made anything better.
nobody asked you to post in this thread. you came and posted this shit in here because the thread is very popular, because lots and lots of people correctly fucking hate generative AI
so I guess please enjoy being the only “non-disingenuous” bootlicker you know outside of work, where everyone’s required (under implicit threat to their livelihood) to love this shitty fucking technology
but most of all: don’t fucking come back, none of us Luddites need your mid ass
@blarth @TheThrillOfTime huh. You totally name at least one use case then, huh
You only didn't because it's so blindingly obvious
(It's BS)
Also, learn about Luddites, man
Betamax actually found use in Television broadcast until the switch to HDTV occurred in 2009
No, it didn't.
the later digital variants of beta weren't retired by sony until ~ 2016.
I had no clue that they did digital betamax....
That would make senes though...
There was at one point an HDVHS as well it was essentially a 1080P MPEG stream on a VHS tape