You would have thought that we knew better. After the fall out of the VHS vs. Betamax wars it seemed clear that standardization was the best way for content owners and consumer electronics companies to make a gazillion dollars when everyone goes out to buy decks and tapes. The runaway success of the DVD format was the result of that fallout.

But it seems that all that newfound success has made the consumer electronics companies enter a new cycle of hubris. Perhaps you’ve heard a bit about the new attempt to make you repurchase your movie library? The two new competing formats are HD-DVD (led by Toshiba) vs. Blu-ray DVD (led by Sony). There’s no real need to go into the technical differences between the two suffice it to say that both will require you to buy new DVD players and new discs. [Editorial note: if the MPAA is reading this, you should adopt Blu-ray because it holds more data therefore making it harder to pirate.]

Meanwhile, CNET has a fantastic article on a new format that may just pull the rug out from under the big electronics firms. DivX is a video compression technology that has already been adopted by pirates as the medium of choice for years. The format has already been adopted by several low-rent chinese/taiwanese DVD and VCD manufacturers. They simply aim to release players on the market (backwards compatible with existing DVD) that simply cost 1/10 of the new players. If Betamax lost out to VHS because of cost then Sony and Toshiba may see their multi-billion DVD market disappear before their eyes…