Posted on 09/29/2010 12:13:37 AM PDT by smokingfrog
Other than the frenzied anticipation for the coming breed of tablet PCs, the one topic that dominates the mindspace of the technorati these days is the world of e-readers.
More specifically, a great debate is brewing; each of the e-readers and their associated online book stores favor differing standards and file formats, and we may have another good ole fashioned format war on our hands. (Nothing gets a techie's blood pressure going more than watching as competing technologies duke it out.)
Format wars are to the tech world what elections are to politics, or what playoffs are to sports: a chance for competing candidates to go big or go home -- based on the preferences of the masses. The most cited example is the great Betamax vs. VHS war of the early '80s (in which the objectively better standard got trounced), but, in truth, battles over standards have been with us since the first wheel was chipped from stone. Switched took a gander through time, and pulled together some of the greatest (and most interesting) format wars, most of which affect us today. Hit up the comments for battles that you think deserve inclusion in our hall of forgotten, or outmatched, tech.
1. Metric vs. U.S./English customary
2. AC vs. DC
3. QWERTY vs. Dvorak
4. TV Scan Lines: 441 vs. 800
5. AM Radio vs. FM Radio
6. CDMA vs. GSM Cellular Technology
7. SACD Vs. DVD-Audio
8. Digital Audio Formats
9. HD DVDS vs. Blu-ray
10. 4G Wireless: WiMax vs. LTE
(Excerpt) Read more at switched.com ...
I am glad Dr. Who defeated the Dvorak
if I remember correctly VHS beat Betamax because .... Beta only had an hour on a tape? or something like that.
Betamax charged providers, VHS gave it away.
That’s one theory.
Another is: Porn producers used VHS. Game over.
I thought that VHS paid the porn producers to use VHS.
Not unlike Blu-ray.
Both formats were invented by Sony. Sony kept the BETAMAX format exclusive for itself due to the better quality of playback. It licensed VHS and in effect created a crowd of competitors who hit the US market first. The rest as they say is history.
Bump
VHS was developed by JVC, not Sony.
The Grundig/Philips Video 2000 system was (arguably) better than either.
Cylindrical vs platter media; 78 vs 45 vs 33 1/3; two quadraphonic formats; videodiscs vs laserdisks; DAT vs DCC; HD-DVD vs BluRay; and for that matter, Ham Radio vs Turkey-and-Swiss-on-Rye Radio...
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