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I think the general consensus was that HD-DVD lost the Format War because Blu-Ray had the backing of huge studios like Sony, Walt Disney, and 20th Century Fox. That they liked the extra DRM features, the region blocking, the higher picture quality (but then again most don't notice), and so on. And of course, the PS3 came in with the Blu-Ray player.

Meanwhile Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal and others liked the cheaper manufacturing costs, the interactive content which made special features and behind the scenes content abundant compared to Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD just loaded way faster than a Blu-Ray (my current BD player takes an awful long time to start up a film)

I'm not sure how HD-DVD could have exactly won the war unless there were some major decisions by Disney or 20th Century to not support it or Sony realized the manufacturing costs for the PS3 blu-ray functionality were too high to make a profit early on, or insane marketing to make HD-DVD the consumer's choice of format (maybe even some aggressive marketing like framing Blu-Ray as the snob's choice with less features, anti consumer practices like DRM and region blocking, and slower loading). Maybe Microsoft should have countered Sony by going full HD-DVD from the start too?

But I mainly wanted to discuss the impact and ramifications if HD-DVD won the war sometime between 2006-2008.

I know HD-DVDs were smaller in storage size (15GB and 30GB vs Blu-Ray's 25GB and 50GB) but I believe Toshiba was working on a 60GB version too that never saw the light of day because of the Format War's end. So I suppose it's possible that some time after they start standardizing 30GB discs and perhaps pushing for 60GB discs for the 'Premium' versions for higher bitrates and more features. I could see a 'Lord of the Rings' Super HD-DVD edition with all the extended scenes, a ton of special features, and so on fit on a 60GB disc.

The lower manufacturing costs for studios might be a good thing for television series and indie films perhaps? There's a ton of live action and animated series that don't see the HD physical treatment and they tend to cite the high costs of Blu-Ray to this day, so maybe HD-DVDs could be beneficial to the TV industry. Indie Filmmakers probably would too.

Gaming is a bit harder to speculate and I don't really see that big of a change other than Microsoft aggressively pushing HD-DVD add-ons and developers start fitting their games on it, creating a 'premium' version with better visuals, maybe even more content too. Yes it would 'split' the gaming base but we saw how today there's the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One Pro. Gaming though will likely switch to digital downloads as internet speeds improve just like IOTL.

As for digital streaming... I think inevitably HD-DVD sales would start to fall just like Blu-Ray due to convenience. I like to think HD-DVD's might fare a bit better over the years than Blu-Ray Discs IOTL, maybe due to price dropping (due to lower manufacturing costs) but the difference wouldn't be significant and streaming will overshadow physical media immensely. HD-DVDs might be a bit better for owners of certain series and big blockbuster films due to special features and quality over streaming quality but yeah, not a huge difference from today.

Thoughts?
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