Thanks snip. Sorry to here about the ex.
Ya know as I reflect, we have had Betamax vs. VHS, SACD vs. DVD-A and now Blu-ray vs HD-DVD. All competing formats and all fostering aggravating, expensive, frustrating and unnecessary consumer abuse, confusion and expense. Not to mention the additional issue of companies spending lots of time and R&D money (eventually translating into more consumer expense) trying to get the competing stuff to work together in individual components. I give you SACD vs. DVD-A and the resulting universal players. These events are usually driven by Sony stepping back and saying - "Good idea, but I think I'll do my own format instead and make it proprietary".
I'm all for competition and technology improvements resulting from that competition, but it seems to be an expensive and frustrating way to go about it.
I'd really like to see a "Department of Common Sense For Agreement on Standardizing Formats To Avoid Hosing Consumers" in charge of this kind of thing. Then these companies could all be more cost effective and sopend their time making things that are dependable, feature rich and more affordable.
