Format war

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A format war describes competition between competing, and typically mutually incompatible, electronic media formats, usually very costly to the format-owning parties involved. It results from a failure to agree on a technical standard. Perhaps the most famous example was the videotape format war of the late 1970s and early 1980s, between the rival VHS and Betamax Videotape formats.

An ironic aspect of format wars is that perceived technical superiority does not always win. Though Betamax was perceived by consumers to have better picture quality than VHS, a number of factors including VHS's longer recording time, wider range of models and suppliers, and lower cost eventually relegated Betamax to a niche market in Japan. In addition, Sony refused to allow pornographic materials to be released on Beta while it was readily available on VHS.

Some notable examples of format wars include:

[edit] 1910s

Basic recording formats: cylinder versus disk. In 1877 Thomas Edison invented sound recording technology using a tin cylinder, and soon thereafter the so-called "Edison cylinder" was mass-marketed. However, in 1886 the use of a disk was introduced and by the 1890s both cylinders and disks were in widespread use. Disks saved space and were cheaper, but due to the constant angular velocity (CAV) of their rotation, the sound quality varied noticeably from the outer edge to the inner portion nearest the center. Edison, a stickler for sound quality, staunchly refused to produce the disks until the late teens when, bowing to considerable market pressure, the Edison company finally began producing disks.

[edit] 1920s

78 rpm gramophone record formats: lateral versus vertical "hill-and-dale" groove cutting. When Edison finally introduced his "diamond disc" (using a diamond instead of a steel needle), it was cut hill-and dale, meaning that the groove modulated on the vertical axis (as it had on all cylinders), and unlike the other disk manufacturers which cut their disks laterally, meaning that the groove modulated on the horizontal axis. In 1929 Thomas Edison bowed out of the record industry altogether, ceasing all production of his disks, and also cylinders which he had also manufactured up to that point. In addition, there were several more minor "format wars" between the various brands using various speeds ranging from 72 to 96 rpm. The Edison disks rotated at about 80 rpm. In 1958, the stereophonic record was introduced which uses perpendicular modulations for each channel, providing backward compatibility to the lateral-cut monaural recording.

[edit] 1940s

Vinyl record formats: Columbia Records' 12-inch (30 cm) Long Play (LP) 33⅓ rpm microgroove record versus RCA Victor's 7-inch (17.5 cm) / 45 rpm Extended Play (EP) during the years 1948–1950. Ended in a compromise because each format found a separate marketing niche, and record players were redesigned to use either type. Both formats nearly disappeared with the rise of the compact disc, though vinyl records are still used by niche audiences such as disk jockeys and audiophiles.

[edit] 1960s

Portable audio tape formats: 8-track and four-track cartridges versus Compact Cassette. While notably successful into the mid-to-late 1970s, the 8-track eventually lost due to technical limitations, including variable audio quality and lack of fine control.
Color TV broadcast formats: PAL and SECAM. In 1965, the European countries failed to agree on one common format for broadcasting color TV. Even though they all agreed on the 625-line 50 half-frames/sec format (making the British 405-line and the French 819-line formats obsolete), they failed to agree on how to encode the color. Germany developed the PAL system, which became the standard in most of Western Europe. France, however, developed its own SECAM system, involving Soviet scientists in the development, and it was consequently adopted in the Eastern bloc. In the long run, PAL has been more popular (several SECAM countries, especially in Eastern Europe, switched to PAL), and most "SECAM" devices are PAL devices that support SECAM. Key to this is the fact that SECAM video is not easy to edit and cannot be mixed; much SECAM production is done in PAL, component video, or digital video before being output to an analog SECAM signal.

[edit] 1970s

VHS vs. Betamax vs. Video 2000, the videotape format war

Various Quadraphonic encoding methods: CD-4, SQ, QS-Matrix, and others. The expense (and speaker placement troubles) of quadraphonic, coupled with the competing formats requiring various demodulators and decoders led to an early demise of quadraphonic, though 8-track tape experienced a temporary boost from the introduction of the Q8 form of 8-track cartridge. Quadraphonic sound returned in the 1990s substantially updated as surround sound but incompatible with old hardware.

[edit] 1980s

Video8 vs. VHS-C and later Hi8 vs. S-VHS-C camcorder tape formats. This is an extension on the VHS vs. Betacam fight, but here, Video8 and Hi8 won widespread acceptance for several years, until MiniDV replaced both sides of the standard.
AM stereo was capable of fidelity equivalent to FM but was doomed in the USA by competing formats during the 1980s with Motorola's C-QUAM competing vigorously with four other incompatible formats including those by Magnavox, Kahn/Haseltine, and Harris. It is still widely used in Japan, and sees sporadic use by broadcast stations in the United States despite the lack of consumer equipment to support it.

[edit] 1990s

MiniDisc (MD) by Sony vs. Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) by Philips, won by MiniDisc in the mid 1990s, although the preceding format war made consumers very cautious and neither format ever achieved widespread popularity.
X2 vs K56flex – these predecessors to the V.90 and V.92 modem protocols engaged in a brief fight for market dominance until V.90 (based on K56flex, but not identical) was developed in 1999. For some time, online providers needed to maintain two modem banks to provide dial-up access for both technologies.
Digital audio data compression formats: MP3 versus Ogg Vorbis versus Advanced Audio Coding versus Windows Media Audio. As with digital video, the competing formats can be played on the same equipment (with the exception of some mobile players). Each format has found its own niche— while MP3 is the de facto standard for audio encoding, WMA and AAC are favored by commercial music distributors, and Vorbis has found its strongest use among game developers and the like who have need for a high-quality audio codec but do not want to pay the licensing fees attached to other codecs.
Digital video formats: DVD versus DIVX (not to be confused with DivX). DIVX was similar to DVD but included pay per view features. DIVX players could play DVDs, but standard DVD players couldn't play DIVX disks. Several Hollywood studios (Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures) initially released their movies exclusively in the DIVX format.
Digital video data compression formats: Windows Media Video versus RealVideo versus DivX versus QuickTime. While in theory, all formats work equally well on most major operating systems like Microsoft Windows, which makes the stakes for the consumer considerably lower, support for WMV, based on ASF, does not come with free software operating systems and players due to legal issues. According to the popular site Doom9, DivX video codec boasts the highest quality versus compression rate of those already mentioned, while it is beaten by XviD, which is bested by x264.
Memory cards, a five-way brawl: CompactFlash vs. Memory Stick vs. MultiMediaCard / Secure Digital card vs. SmartMedia vs. XD-Picture Card. This ongoing contest is complicated by the existence of multiple variants of the various formats. Some of these, such as miniSD, are compatible with their parent formats, while current generations of Memory Sticks break compatibility with the original format.
Hi-fi digital audio discs: DVD-Audio versus SACD. These two formats are likely to coexist due to newer players that handle both formats with equal ease, though neither has caught on with the market. The fastest-growing music formats today are lossy compressed formats.

[edit] 2000s

Recordable DVD formats: DVD+R versus DVD-R, and originally DVD-RAM. Ultimately this has resolved, as most new DVD recorders support both formats designated with DVD±R.
High-definition optical disc formats: Blu-ray Disc versus HD DVD. Blu-ray Discs are backed largely by Sony, Philips, Sun Microsystems, Dell, HP, Pioneer, TDK, and Apple, and HD DVD by Toshiba, Sanyo, RCA, Microsoft and Intel. In 2006, players supporting HD DVD or Blu-ray were released. Videogame consoles such as the PlayStation 3 (Blu-ray) and Xbox 360 (through an add-on HD DVD drive sold separately) provide next-generation DVD technology. In January of 2007, LG announced the launch of a dual-format player capable of playing both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD content. ^[1]^[2]Interesting side-venture relating to this format war is the EVD backed by China.

Ultra-wideband networking technology — in early 2006, an IEEE standards working group disbanded because two factions could not agree on a single standard for a successor to Wi-Fi. (WiMedia Alliance, IEEE 802.15, WirelessHD)