A format war describes competition between competing, and typically mutually incompatible, media formats, usually very costly to the format-owning parties involved. Perhaps the most famous example was the videotape format war of the late 1970s / 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 relegated Beta to a professional production role in a slightly redesigned version called Betacam. Betacam uses the same physical cassette as Betamax, but records the video to the tape in component format (as opposed to Betamax's composite). Betacam also uses a faster linear tape speed.

As listed above, there are format wars that neither side wins, due to the technology becoming obsolete, and other format wars that neither side wins because users can easily obtain hardware and/or software capable of handling either format, or that all sides tried to achieve vendor lock-in before their dominance were assured.

Some notable examples of format wars include: __NOTOC__

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 were nearly eliminated with the rise of the compact disc, though vinyl records are still used by niche audiences such as disk jockeys and audiophiles.

1960s

• Portable audio tape formats: 8-track and four-track cartridges versus Compact audio cassette. The 8-track lost due to technical limitations, including variable audio quality and lack of fine control.

1980s

• VHS vs. Betamax vs. Video 2000, the Videotape format war, see top of this article.
• Video8 vs. VHS-C and later Hi8 vs. S-VHS-C in the domain of camcorder tape formats. This is somewhat an extension on the VHS vs. Betacam fight, but here, Video8 and Hi8 got some 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.

1990s

• Micro Channel Architecture vs. Extended Industry Standard Architecture — Competing standards developed by IBM and Compaq respectively to replace the system expansion bus of the PC. Neither was particularly successful, as the computer industry as a whole shifted to PCI in the early 1990s.
• MiniDisc 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 in the West.
• 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. 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. (Note that DIVX should not be confused with DivX).
• Digital video data compression formats: Windows Media Video versus RealVideo versus DivX versus QuickTime. However, all formats work equally well on most major operating systems (OS's) like Microsoft Windows, which makes the stakes for the consumer considerably lower.
• Memory cards "five-way brawl": CompactFlash vs. Memory Stick vs. MultiMediaCard / Secure Digital card vs. SmartMedia vs. XD-Picture Card.
• 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 at the moment. Indeed, by far the fastest-growing music formats today are lossy compressed formats.

2000s

• Recordable DVD formats: DVD+R versus DVD-R, and originally DVD-RAM. Ultimately this has become a non-issue, as most new DVD recorders support both formats and are referred to as DVD±R; DVD-RAM, on the other hand, has not been so successful and is likely to ultimately fail due to a lack of compatibility with standard DVD discs.
• XM Radio vs. Sirius radio — their satellite radio receivers are not interoperable.
• High-definition DVD formats: Blu-ray versus HD-DVD versus Enhanced Versatile Disc
• 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.

External links

• BBC: Next-generation DVD battle begins

Marketing

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