HD DVD vs Blu-ray: How Sony Won the War With a Games Console

In 2006, Toshiba’s flagship HD-XA1 player hid a full Pentium 4 computer under its lid — complete with a gigabyte of RAM and dual cooling fans. It was the most expensive machine of a brand-new high-definition disc format. Less than two years later, the format was dead.This video tells the full story of the HD DVD vs Blu-ray war: how a blue laser invented by an almost-unknown engineer in a small Japanese town made high-definition discs possible, why Toshiba bet on familiarity and cheaper manufacturing while Sony and its allies bet on capacity and the PlayStation 3, how Hollywood’s shifting alliances and a $150-million rumour decided the outcome, and why the “losing” format still lives on in collectors’ shelves and Chinese CBHD discs.From the DVD compromise of 1995 to Netflix’s quiet “Watch Now” tab that ultimately made both formats obsolete, this is the story of the last great physical-format war — and the computer that was hiding inside a disc player all along.