Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? Well, it's time for
Speaker 1: a tech stuff tidbits. This one will probably be a
Speaker 1: long one, like a lot of mine. I get it.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at being brief, but I thought I would
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about format wars, which I've talked
Speaker 1: about before, but uh, it was one of those that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to kind of talk about to explain
Speaker 1: what we mean when we say format war and what
Speaker 1: that can imply. And the older you are, the more
Speaker 1: format wars you have likely witnessed firsthand. Like I can
Speaker 1: think of a handful that I've seen, but of course
Speaker 1: there are plenty that we're way before my time. So
Speaker 1: what is a format war? Why can they be really bad,
Speaker 1: particular for consumers? And what are a few examples. That's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna look at today, But first let's define it.
Speaker 1: So a format war essentially is when you've got two
Speaker 1: similar technologies, so they each accomplish the same thing, or
Speaker 1: at least a very similar outcome. They're both meant to
Speaker 1: provide for the same purpose, they might do it in
Speaker 1: very different ways. In fact, frequently they do approach this
Speaker 1: in extremely different ways. And typically these two different or more.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's more than just two. But these different technologies
Speaker 1: are incompatible with one another. So they're each meant to
Speaker 1: achieve a certain goal, but they can't work together because
Speaker 1: they're doing it in a fundamentally different way or sometimes
Speaker 1: a subtly different way, but a way that's different enough
Speaker 1: that they can't work together. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: you buy technology A, then you aren't really able to
Speaker 1: use the stuff for technology B on it. Like we
Speaker 1: see this very easily and stuff like consoles, right, we
Speaker 1: think of the console wars where you have an Xbox
Speaker 1: or a PlayStation or a Nintendo. Well, you can't play
Speaker 1: PlayStation games on an Xbox, you can't play Xbox games
Speaker 1: on a Nintendo, and so forth right, you can get
Speaker 1: the titles for those particular consoles, but you can't put
Speaker 1: an Xbox you know, disk in a PlayStation console. It
Speaker 1: won't work. I mean you could do it, it just
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. Now. One way you could get around that
Speaker 1: is if you buy all the consoles. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you have a Tech A and a Tech B. The
Speaker 1: one way you could get around being limited is you
Speaker 1: could also buy tech B. But then you're spending way
Speaker 1: more cash. And ain't all of us got that kind
Speaker 1: of cheddar? You know what I'm saying. I am not
Speaker 1: the kind of person who can buy every format just
Speaker 1: so that way I have access to everything. And you know,
Speaker 1: we really do see this today played out in other ways,
Speaker 1: like the different streaming services I would argue are kind
Speaker 1: of a format war. Um, it's more of a streaming
Speaker 1: war because the format is pretty much the same. It's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, if you have uh one type
Speaker 1: of streaming device versus another, that you're limited to specific
Speaker 1: types of streaming content. But otherwise it's very similar in
Speaker 1: that if you want access to everything, you gotta subscribe
Speaker 1: to everything, which is pretty frustrating as a consumer. So
Speaker 1: the reason format wars tend to be bad for consumers
Speaker 1: is that we're faced with really tough choices. If we
Speaker 1: want whatever the technology actually does, then we then have
Speaker 1: to decide which option do we go with. Do we
Speaker 1: go with tech A or do we go with tech B.
Speaker 1: We do that knowing that our choice is going to
Speaker 1: lock us in from that point forward into that technologies
Speaker 1: ecosystem again unless we go crazy and buy all of them.
Speaker 1: So if we do that, if we're buying a specific one,
Speaker 1: we say, all right, I've looked at both tech A
Speaker 1: and tech B really for a long time. I have
Speaker 1: ultimately decided that Tech A is the one that I
Speaker 1: like more, so I'm gonna go with that. Um. But
Speaker 1: we do that knowing that we're gonna miss out on
Speaker 1: anything that was made explicitly and exclusively for Tech B.
Speaker 1: And likewise, if we had made the other choice, we'd
Speaker 1: be facing the same situation, just in reverse. So you
Speaker 1: can go with a road less traveled and it will
Speaker 1: make all the difference. But different does not mean better.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean worse either. It means different, and you
Speaker 1: might feel reluctant to get on board in the first
Speaker 1: place early on in a format war, because sometimes formats
Speaker 1: go obsolete. In several of the examples that will talk
Speaker 1: about in this episode, one or more formats would ultimately
Speaker 1: fall to a different one that would survive, and obviously
Speaker 1: that means that anyone who has backed a failed format
Speaker 1: is left with a piece of technology that becomes increasingly
Speaker 1: irrelevant and ultimately obsolete. Meanwhile, if you want to stay
Speaker 1: up to speed, you have to bite the bullet and
Speaker 1: buy the other format. Either that or you just you know,
Speaker 1: wash your hands the whole thing and walk away from
Speaker 1: technology and live out in the woods, which, trust me,
Speaker 1: I have been tempted to do on numerous occasions. Now,
Speaker 1: if this happens to you once or twice, where you
Speaker 1: back a format and the format ultimately fails, you might
Speaker 1: end up being a little gun shy around emerging formats.
Speaker 1: You might then have a philosophy of this looks really cool.
Speaker 1: There are two different versions of this thing, and they're
Speaker 1: fighting each other. I'm just gonna wait and see how
Speaker 1: this shakes out before I jump on board. Right you,
Speaker 1: you've been bitten too many times. There are early adopters
Speaker 1: who who just live for this stuff and they go
Speaker 1: out and they'll buy every new thing as it comes out. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know where they're getting their money from. It
Speaker 1: is not the same place where I get my money from,
Speaker 1: because they don't let me get that kind of money.
Speaker 1: So in that case, you might feel like a wait
Speaker 1: and see approach is better. And honestly, this is sort
Speaker 1: of what I typically do, although I do occasionally fall
Speaker 1: victim to getting hyped because you have to suppress the
Speaker 1: evil feeling of fomo, you know, the fear of missing out,
Speaker 1: particularly as you see other folks really enjoying their technology
Speaker 1: while you just sort of sit and wait. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of imagining now people playing video games while writing jet
Speaker 1: skis and flying over waves or something. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that can happen with format wars is that the industry
Speaker 1: as a whole sometimes will coalesce around a unified standard.
Speaker 1: And it is best for the consumer anyway when this
Speaker 1: happens before products ever come to market, because at that point,
Speaker 1: customers have the option to buy whichever brand of the
Speaker 1: technology they like, and they know it should work with
Speaker 1: pretty much anything else made for that specific use case. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, like there are times where companies will
Speaker 1: all be developing a technology that's meant to do something similar,
Speaker 1: and the companies, well, then behind closed doors essentially meet
Speaker 1: with one another, hash it out, make compromises, and create
Speaker 1: a more unified technology before they come to market. So
Speaker 1: then when you go to the store, you're like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: there's brand A version of this, there's Brand B version
Speaker 1: of this, there's Brand C, version of this, but they
Speaker 1: all do the same thing, and the stuff that's made
Speaker 1: for them will work on the other ones. That's ideal
Speaker 1: for customers. Doesn't always happen that way, but we have
Speaker 1: seen that happen a few times. UH, Like the Compact Disc.
Speaker 1: While it did have competitive competing formats, the Compact disc
Speaker 1: was not like by itself, but the Compact Disc benefited
Speaker 1: because that was it was the product of that kind
Speaker 1: of compromise before it came to market, and that ultimately
Speaker 1: meant that consumers had fewer incompatible formats in front of
Speaker 1: them in order to uh to enjoy that technology. So
Speaker 1: it does happen, but um often we won't see agreement
Speaker 1: in an industry on a particular standard until after different
Speaker 1: formats have already hit the marketing. But then, of course
Speaker 1: it's too late. At least some portion of the consumer
Speaker 1: public will be left behind if ultimately everyone then agrees
Speaker 1: upon a standard. All right, Well, let's talk about a
Speaker 1: few famous format wars. And there's quite a few of them.
Speaker 1: There have been dozens of them. I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: some that aren't very obscure, Like I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: some well known ones just for the purposes of kind
Speaker 1: of explaining what was going on, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them will relate to technology and various forms of media,
Speaker 1: because that's one realm. Whereas consumers, we have seen format wars,
Speaker 1: you know, front and center, like those tend to be
Speaker 1: the most uh published or publicized format wars in our
Speaker 1: era and uh And when I'm talking about media, I'm
Speaker 1: really talking about any content that plays upon technology. It
Speaker 1: could be media in the form of music, it could
Speaker 1: be shows and movies or or whatever, or it could
Speaker 1: be software. So that's kind of what I mean when
Speaker 1: I say media. But one format that I've talked about
Speaker 1: a format war that I covered in past episodes. I
Speaker 1: also talked about this when I I appeared as the
Speaker 1: Quizster on Ridiculous History. If you've never listened to Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: you should check it out. It's a very fun show
Speaker 1: and once in a rare while I'll pop on as
Speaker 1: a ridiculous, over the top villain called the Quister. But
Speaker 1: there was one episode where I showed up and talked
Speaker 1: about rail gauges, as in railroad tracks, you know what
Speaker 1: trains travel upon. In the very early days of railroads,
Speaker 1: you had different engineers and different companies that were building
Speaker 1: train engines and cars or rather like bogeis or trucks
Speaker 1: as they're sometimes called. These are the wheeled frames that
Speaker 1: sit on the rails and then you essentially bolt cars
Speaker 1: onto these frames. Well, the were a lot of people
Speaker 1: making these, and they were making them at different sizes,
Speaker 1: Like they had designed the tracks and the the trains
Speaker 1: uh to run on a specific width of rails, and
Speaker 1: they weren't all the same everywhere. So this is just
Speaker 1: a random, like hypothetical example. You could have a region
Speaker 1: within a country where one part of the region there's, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a company that's laying down tracks that are a
Speaker 1: hundred centimeters apart because the wheels on their vehicles are
Speaker 1: a hundred centimeters apart. But elsewhere in that same region,
Speaker 1: you might have folks building other trains where they've settled
Speaker 1: on a width that's a hundred twenty centimeters apart. And
Speaker 1: so you can't have a train that was built for
Speaker 1: one run on the tracks of the other, right, because
Speaker 1: you know, if a train were to encounter a section
Speaker 1: of track where suddenly there was a twenty centimeter difference
Speaker 1: in the width apart from the rails, the train's gonna
Speaker 1: go flying off the track it you know, the wheels
Speaker 1: can't expand with it. So this obviously was a limiting factor.
Speaker 1: So as people were building train tracks, they eventually arrived
Speaker 1: at locations where other tracks were also being built at
Speaker 1: a different width, and that meant there was no way
Speaker 1: for a train to pass from one set to another,
Speaker 1: and if you really wanted to travel long distance, chances
Speaker 1: are you would have to change trains, perhaps a few
Speaker 1: times in different towns. In fact, there was one town
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania where this became a cornerstone of their local economy.
Speaker 1: They counted on the fact that you had different rail
Speaker 1: gauges all terminating at this one town because it would
Speaker 1: mean that trains would have to stop in that town,
Speaker 1: and then the locals often found employment by doing stuff
Speaker 1: that was related to the fact people were stopped in
Speaker 1: the town in order to change trains. So there were
Speaker 1: people who made money as as porters who were unlow
Speaker 1: trains or loading other trains. You had a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are making money because they were providing food
Speaker 1: or lodging or both two travelers. So when you had
Speaker 1: government saying, you know, it would make way more sense
Speaker 1: for us to settle on a standard rail gage so
Speaker 1: that you could travel seamlessly from point A to point
Speaker 1: B without having these issues. Towns like this one in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania really objected to that, and by objected, I mean
Speaker 1: like they were. They got a little rowdy, they started
Speaker 1: tearing up train tracks. That's how bad this format war
Speaker 1: was going. Because they saw it as their livelihood and
Speaker 1: if you were too streamline things, it might be better
Speaker 1: for the passengers, but it wouldn't be better for this town.
Speaker 1: So this was a format war where depending upon what
Speaker 1: side you were on, like what where you were coming from,
Speaker 1: if you were coming from the perspective of a traveler
Speaker 1: or you were coming from the perspective of a townsperson
Speaker 1: who is dependent upon this for their living, you had
Speaker 1: a very different view on what was important. Now. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: at least in most cases, UH standards were arrived at
Speaker 1: and the train gauge was set to a specific width. UH.
Speaker 1: There are still trains in countries even like the United
Speaker 1: States that have a different rail gauge, but they tend
Speaker 1: to be curiosities now. They're like tourist attractions UM and
Speaker 1: typically are not really used that much in industry these days.
Speaker 1: So you can. You can sometimes find these in interesting
Speaker 1: places where you know people have maintained the tracks and
Speaker 1: the systems so that you can experience it. But if
Speaker 1: you're traveling coast to coast, then you're on standardized rail gauge.
Speaker 1: So that was a format work that was long in
Speaker 1: the making and took a long time to resolve and
Speaker 1: didn't go easily. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break here,
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we'll talk about some more
Speaker 1: format wars. Okay, let's get back to it. So another
Speaker 1: really big and important format war, particularly here in the
Speaker 1: United States back in the day, like like late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds into the nineteen hundreds, was alternating current versus direct current.
Speaker 1: So here in the US, that war was really personified
Speaker 1: as Thomas Edison on the direct current side versus George
Speaker 1: Westinghouse on the alternating current side. Though some people will
Speaker 1: substitute George Westinghouse. They'll they'll put in Nicola Tesla instead,
Speaker 1: and it becomes Tesla versus Edison. That's not really an
Speaker 1: accurate description because Edison was really more of a business
Speaker 1: owner as was Westinghouse, and Tesla was more of an engineer. Um.
Speaker 1: But we often see it Edison versus Tesla's really Edison
Speaker 1: versus Westinghouse. And anyway, Westinghouson and Tesla were on the
Speaker 1: alternating current side. There were numerous promotional stunts that both
Speaker 1: sides held in an effort to have their own standard
Speaker 1: adopted for the purposes of building out infrastructure throughout the
Speaker 1: United States. I mean this was like, this was representing
Speaker 1: a true fortune in investments right in order to build
Speaker 1: out power plants and all the wiring and everything that
Speaker 1: would be needed in order to transmit power to the
Speaker 1: average American citizen. It is hard to put a figure
Speaker 1: on how big a a fortune that was a potential fortune.
Speaker 1: So clearly the stakes were very high between d C
Speaker 1: and a C, and they each had their own uh
Speaker 1: benefits and drawbacks, but ultimately a C would win out
Speaker 1: like they were. And again there were some huge promotional battles.
Speaker 1: A big one was when Westinghouse managed to to land
Speaker 1: the contract for the World's Fair to light the World's Fair.
Speaker 1: But and of course there's there's stories that have grown
Speaker 1: with the retelling, such as the the electrocution of an
Speaker 1: elephant named Topsy using alternating current um, which was frequently
Speaker 1: attributed to Edison in recent years, but really it was
Speaker 1: more like Edison's company that did this. And the story
Speaker 1: gets really complex. It's still not a good story, like
Speaker 1: you know, hearing about doing a public execution of an
Speaker 1: animal in part to show how a type of electricity
Speaker 1: is quote unquote more dangerous than another type. You know,
Speaker 1: it's that's indefensible, really, but the story is more complicated.
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at that. However, ultimately a C one out,
Speaker 1: at least for the purposes of long distance electricity transmission.
Speaker 1: And and honestly, the reason for that was largely practical
Speaker 1: because it was way easier to use transformers, which work
Speaker 1: with a C current but not d C current. And uh,
Speaker 1: it was easy to use transformers in order to step
Speaker 1: up voltage for the purposes of long distance transmission, step
Speaker 1: down voltage when it gets to its destination and make
Speaker 1: use of it, whereas d C you would have to
Speaker 1: build way more electric plants closer to the point where
Speaker 1: it's providing the electricity. So, just from a practical standpoint,
Speaker 1: a C ultimately one out at least back then now
Speaker 1: right now, as I record this episode, I'm also on
Speaker 1: at work on another really big episode about the music industry,
Speaker 1: both the technology and the business side of the music industry,
Speaker 1: because the two are extremely closely tied together, Like you
Speaker 1: can't really I would argue extract one without the other
Speaker 1: because they inform each other. So the that I am
Speaker 1: hard at work, it's probably actually gonna be more than
Speaker 1: one episode about the music industry and technology. So this
Speaker 1: next format war I want to talk about, plays into that.
Speaker 1: In the early days of recorded media, like just when
Speaker 1: people were learning how they could take sound and record
Speaker 1: that onto a physical object and then play it back,
Speaker 1: essentially reversing the process. UH, you had companies like Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison's that were rushing to dominate the space, and there
Speaker 1: were a few different formats even in the early days. Now,
Speaker 1: one very early one was wax cylinders, and essentially recording
Speaker 1: audio meant that you had a cylinder of wax mounted
Speaker 1: on a spindle. The spindle would rotate, UH, and you
Speaker 1: would put down a stylus or needle that would carve
Speaker 1: a groove into the cylinder, and if you were to
Speaker 1: speak into a device would either be like a horn
Speaker 1: or a microphone, then it could transmit the vibrations from
Speaker 1: the sound ultimately to the stylus. That's carving into the
Speaker 1: wax cylinder, and you're carving a physical representation of the
Speaker 1: sound that's being presented to this recording device. And to
Speaker 1: play it back, you would take the cylinder, you'd put
Speaker 1: it in a player, and you would have a different
Speaker 1: kind of stylus that would travel through the groove that
Speaker 1: had already been cut through the recording process. And essentially,
Speaker 1: again you were just having the same recording process but
Speaker 1: in reverse, and that's where you would get the sound
Speaker 1: playing back. But different companies would have different ways of
Speaker 1: doing this, even as they switched from cylinders, you know,
Speaker 1: to flat disks like the traditional format we think of
Speaker 1: if you think of like a vinyl record. Uh, they
Speaker 1: weren't vinyl back in those days, but it was that
Speaker 1: same shape, right, the flat disc shape. Well, even then
Speaker 1: there were still major ways to cut the grooves that
Speaker 1: were fundamentally different. So one was that you could do
Speaker 1: sort of a vertical cut grooves. So that meant that
Speaker 1: as the the disc rotated and you're recording to it,
Speaker 1: the needle you're using, the stylus you're using is varying
Speaker 1: in degrees of depth, so it's recording vibrations. Um Essentially
Speaker 1: up and down along the groove, and when you're playing
Speaker 1: it back, it would mean that the playback needle would
Speaker 1: be sloping up or sloping away from the surface, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's where the vibration would be and would be replicated
Speaker 1: to create the sound that you would hear. The other
Speaker 1: way was lateral grooves or lateral cuts, where the groove
Speaker 1: would vary in width. Right, the needle was vibrating, not
Speaker 1: up and down, but left and right, and as it
Speaker 1: was recording, and thus when you're playing it back, same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But these two things were not necessarily
Speaker 1: compatible with one another, which meant that if you bought
Speaker 1: a player that was dependent upon the vertical cut versus
Speaker 1: the lateral cut, then you were limited to just those records.
Speaker 1: So this was another early format war um that was
Speaker 1: tricky for consumers. Um. Another format that was around the
Speaker 1: same time and of the same thing, same media, was
Speaker 1: on all about rotational speed when you were recording and
Speaker 1: playing back sound. So again, in order again accurate sound
Speaker 1: out of a player, you need to play the record
Speaker 1: back at the correct speed. If you have ever tried
Speaker 1: to play a forty five album, forty five refers to
Speaker 1: the number of revolutions per minute, so forty five revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute. In this case, if you were to put
Speaker 1: a forty five album on a record player, but you
Speaker 1: set the record player to its thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third setting, meaning it's rotating thirty three and one third
Speaker 1: times per minute, then when you listen, everything sounds rue
Speaker 1: slow because the playback is slower than the recording speed,
Speaker 1: so it sounds much slower. By by the way, as
Speaker 1: a kid, I found this endlessly entertaining, either playing forty
Speaker 1: five on thirty three or finding thirty three albums and
Speaker 1: playing them at forty five, so everyone sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: the chipmunks or whatever. I was easily entertained as a child,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I'd still have a ready record player this today,
Speaker 1: and uh it requires some careful uh resistance for me
Speaker 1: to not just indulge in that silliness even to this day.
Speaker 1: But you know, there were so many different speed playback
Speaker 1: formats in the early days. Like, it wasn't just forty
Speaker 1: five and thirty three or even seventy eight, which would
Speaker 1: become an early standard. There were tons of different ones,
Speaker 1: typically ranging between sixty all the way up to like
Speaker 1: a hundred eighty Now, that could have caused an enormous
Speaker 1: problem them. Right, Like, if all record players could were
Speaker 1: limited to playing back at a specific speed, that would
Speaker 1: be a nightmare because it would mean that if you
Speaker 1: were shopping for a record, you'd have to make absolutely
Speaker 1: sure that the record was recorded at the same speed
Speaker 1: that your turntable could play back at. Otherwise it would
Speaker 1: just not sound right, it would sound very wrong. However,
Speaker 1: most turntables, most record players that we didn't really call
Speaker 1: them that at the time, but that's what they were.
Speaker 1: Most of them at the time were actually capable of
Speaker 1: playing back at very different speeds, Like you could set
Speaker 1: it to whichever speed you need to. Sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to do it manually and kind of dial it in
Speaker 1: so that you know, it might mean that you're taking
Speaker 1: a little time to get it to sound just right.
Speaker 1: But you had that kind of, uh, that kind of
Speaker 1: flexibility for a lot of those tables. So because of that,
Speaker 1: the format wars weren't spilling over into a negative consumer
Speaker 1: experience too much. It would actually take several decades for
Speaker 1: the music industry to gravitate toward three and then really
Speaker 1: to RPM standards. So the first one, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: earlier was seventy eight RPM. That was pretty close to
Speaker 1: what a lot of the old traditional records used. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them were somewhere between the seventy and
Speaker 1: eighty RPM, So seventy eight was kind of a well
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons, it was set upon as a standard.
Speaker 1: Of those reasons also involved the fact that when people
Speaker 1: stopped using like spring loaded playback machines and they started
Speaker 1: using gear devices, gear ratios ended up creating the necessity
Speaker 1: to stick with certain types of of RPM. The combination
Speaker 1: of electric motors and gear ratios meant that there were
Speaker 1: certain RPM speeds that were easy to attain, and seventy
Speaker 1: eight was one of them. But later on there was
Speaker 1: the forty five rpm, which was the seven inch format.
Speaker 1: This was primarily used for stuff that just needed a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes of audio on each side, so it
Speaker 1: was ideal for things like record singles. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a single song on side A and a single
Speaker 1: song on side B and that's all you would have.
Speaker 1: Then you also had the thirty three and a third
Speaker 1: rpm speed. That one became synonymous with full length record albums.
Speaker 1: And you have to remember also that there were different
Speaker 1: companies pushing these different RPM formats, right, Like, it's not
Speaker 1: that these were just two formats that were out there
Speaker 1: on records. It was that you had companies that were
Speaker 1: really pushing to make that the standard and not the
Speaker 1: other one. But as it turns out, both of them
Speaker 1: would survive, and the reason they would survive is because
Speaker 1: they filled different purposes. Right. You had the forty five,
Speaker 1: which was great for singles. So if you were say
Speaker 1: a teenager who that was the market that was really
Speaker 1: into buying music, you might want to save your money
Speaker 1: and just buy a single song that you were like,
Speaker 1: you're not interested in the full album, and so that
Speaker 1: was a niche that the forty five field. You might
Speaker 1: be a collector and you want an entire album, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend a little bit more money, so you
Speaker 1: go and get the thirty three and a third album,
Speaker 1: full length album. Um, this shaped music in ways that
Speaker 1: go well beyond this episode. I will touch on that
Speaker 1: on the Music Industry episodes, because again, the format itself
Speaker 1: would change the way people made music. It's really fascinating
Speaker 1: history when you get into it. But the important bit
Speaker 1: here is just that because both of these had a use,
Speaker 1: they ultimately would both be adopted as standards and and
Speaker 1: ultimately the different companies would end up adopting the other
Speaker 1: standards as well, so it stopped being something that was
Speaker 1: brand specific and just became the different formats that were
Speaker 1: available for record collectors. And there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: others we can talk about that happened over the following decades.
Speaker 1: For example, there was an infamous battle that was primarily
Speaker 1: between our c A and its subsidiary NBC versus CBS
Speaker 1: in the United States, and this was over the format
Speaker 1: of color television broadcast technology. Now, r c A and
Speaker 1: CBS were bitter rivals in trying to establish what should
Speaker 1: be the standardized color television broadcast format, and initially CBS
Speaker 1: appeared to secure that format in the US UH, despite
Speaker 1: our CIA really putting up a fuss about it. However,
Speaker 1: before CBS could really intrench itself, the Korean War broke
Speaker 1: out and the United States got involved, and UH and
Speaker 1: some technical challenges on top of the shortage of materials
Speaker 1: sidelined color broadcast television in the US. Also, at the
Speaker 1: same time, our c A was determined to sand bag
Speaker 1: cbs IS operations by only selling black and white sets.
Speaker 1: R c A would not sell color sets, and the
Speaker 1: CBS color broadcast format was such that it wasn't compatible
Speaker 1: with the older black and white sets, so if you
Speaker 1: had a black and white set, you weren't able to
Speaker 1: watch those color broadcasts. So our c A had a
Speaker 1: vested interest in in this because the executives wanted to
Speaker 1: establish our CIAS tech as the standard. But there was
Speaker 1: also a practical consideration that whatever color broadcast standard was
Speaker 1: being used should be one that would be viewable even
Speaker 1: if you still only had a black and white set,
Speaker 1: so you'd still be able to watch the broadcast, you
Speaker 1: just wouldn't have color. Obviously, by the time the US
Speaker 1: was ready to really get back into color broadcast, CBS
Speaker 1: had given up. It gave up. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: it gave up like a week before, or maybe even
Speaker 1: a day before the US announced that it was ready
Speaker 1: to look at color broadcast standards, and CBS had already
Speaker 1: pulled the plug at that point, and our c A
Speaker 1: was in a position to really pick it back up.
Speaker 1: It's technology would provide the foundation for the National Television
Speaker 1: System Committee, or in t SC format now with color TV.
Speaker 1: I would say that our CIS actions, while motivated primarily
Speaker 1: by a desire to dominate the market, would end up
Speaker 1: having an enormous benefit to the average US consumer an
Speaker 1: audience member, because it meant that you didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about your television only being able to receive a
Speaker 1: subset of all available broadcasts. Color broadcasts could come through
Speaker 1: on your old black and white sets, just you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see color, but you would get the broadcast, and your
Speaker 1: color sets would also be able to pick up older
Speaker 1: black and white transmissions. Uh. And meanwhile, broadcast stations could
Speaker 1: rush to get up to speed. So that was an
Speaker 1: example where again that happened behind the scenes didn't really
Speaker 1: impact most consumers. There weren't very a many color televisions
Speaker 1: that were available before the Korean War really sidelined everything,
Speaker 1: So that ended up being a hiccup in technological progress
Speaker 1: that ultimately benefited the consumer. When we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: cover a few more examples before we wrap up, but
Speaker 1: first let's take this quick break. Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: to music. Another big format war happened between cassette tapes,
Speaker 1: which were all the rage when I was a kid man.
Speaker 1: Mix tapes. Yeah, those are kind of back in in style,
Speaker 1: largely because the guardians of the galaxy. And of course
Speaker 1: people have been making things like playlists and you know,
Speaker 1: burn CDs and stuff forever too. But yeah, mix tapes
Speaker 1: is what we called them back when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: But you know, there was this format war before the
Speaker 1: cassette tape really established itself, where it was the cassette
Speaker 1: tape versus eight tracks versus four track tapes. Now, four
Speaker 1: track tapes didn't get a whole lot of love outside
Speaker 1: of audio file circles. Uh, they didn't really take off
Speaker 1: big time in the consumer space. Eight tracks did a
Speaker 1: little bit better. Uh. Some car manufacturers would incorporate eight
Speaker 1: track players into vehicles, so these were also cassettes of
Speaker 1: a type. But eight track tapes had some pretty big drawbacks.
Speaker 1: One of the major ones was that you could not
Speaker 1: rewind and eight track tape. So let's say that you
Speaker 1: put an eight track of an album in your in
Speaker 1: your jeep and starts playing and you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I like the first song on this side, but this
Speaker 1: is like the third song. You'd have to end up
Speaker 1: flipping it over to the second side, go all the
Speaker 1: way to the end of that like either play it
Speaker 1: or or whatever, and then Ultimately you can flip it
Speaker 1: back over and listen to the first song on side A.
Speaker 1: It was not convenient. Cassette tapes were smaller than eight tracks,
Speaker 1: and you could rewind them. You could also tape over them. Eventually,
Speaker 1: so over time they won out in the format war.
Speaker 1: They had enough advantages that they became much more popular,
Speaker 1: and essentially eight tracks kind of faded into obscurity. Now,
Speaker 1: when I think the actual phrase format war, there's one
Speaker 1: specific one that leads to my mind because it was
Speaker 1: settling down when I was a kid. Right, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that this was the most important format war or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's just the one, like, if I
Speaker 1: hear that phrase, this is what I think of, And
Speaker 1: that was the video cassette format war. Primarily, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about VHS, which was championed by the company j v C.
Speaker 1: And on the other side you had Beta Max, which
Speaker 1: was a Sony product. Now there were other home media
Speaker 1: contenders to those were not the only two, but they
Speaker 1: were the two big big players in the space. You
Speaker 1: had like laser disc. You also had ce D Systems
Speaker 1: UM which I could go off on a rabbit trail
Speaker 1: on the I have one in this office. Uh, they
Speaker 1: were not popular, but I still own one. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it works, but I've got one. Anyway, Let's
Speaker 1: get back to cassettes. So if VCR systems had only
Speaker 1: allowed for playback, If if VCR and Beta Max could
Speaker 1: only play back recorded material that was sold, like you
Speaker 1: would go out and buy a copy of a video
Speaker 1: and that's the only thing you could do with them,
Speaker 1: then it's very possible that Beta Max could have won
Speaker 1: out because Beta max quality was marginally better than VHS.
Speaker 1: Although both formats did evolve over time, it's not like
Speaker 1: they they emerged with one quality and never changed. But
Speaker 1: the thing that really gave v HS a big advantage
Speaker 1: in the long run is that you could use these
Speaker 1: to record material from say a television onto tape so
Speaker 1: you can watch it again later. Uh. That was something
Speaker 1: that the industry was not in favor of, but it
Speaker 1: ultimately happened. And this is where VHS really was superior.
Speaker 1: You could fit more content onto a single VHS tape
Speaker 1: than you could with Beta Max, and this ultimately contributed
Speaker 1: largely to VHS winning out. But it took years. It
Speaker 1: was not like this was an overnight thing. This this
Speaker 1: took place over years and years, and it was a
Speaker 1: vicious fight. Uh it wasn't a guarantee that VHS was
Speaker 1: going to win, But by the early nineteen eighties, Beta
Speaker 1: Max was kind of treated like a punchline. It became
Speaker 1: the you know, the the big example of a technology
Speaker 1: that failed to secure relevance at least around that time period. Uh. Next,
Speaker 1: we're gonna skip over a whole bunch of other stuff
Speaker 1: in order to get to a similar story that played
Speaker 1: out in the two thousands, like mid to late two thousand's.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was the nineteen seventies when we had
Speaker 1: the VHS versus Beta Max war, and three decades later
Speaker 1: we would get a brand new home video format war,
Speaker 1: which would pit Blu Ray versus h D DVD. You
Speaker 1: all know how that turned out, because we don't talk
Speaker 1: about h D DVD anymore, and we still could get
Speaker 1: a Blue Ray if we really want one. And some
Speaker 1: of you might be too young to even remember this
Speaker 1: format war, but back in the mid to late two thousand's,
Speaker 1: this was a really big deal. Both formats were vying
Speaker 1: to become the next big thing after the DVD, Like
Speaker 1: this was supposed to be the step into h D
Speaker 1: television UH, and DVD was somewhat limited in that. So
Speaker 1: you had Blu Ray, which was backed by Sony, and
Speaker 1: Toshiba was behind h D DVD, and these two companies
Speaker 1: rushed to foreign partnerships, both with other technology companies so
Speaker 1: that you know, there'll be other companies producing players that
Speaker 1: could play Blu ray or h D DVD, but they
Speaker 1: also rushed out to foreign partnerships with media companies, like
Speaker 1: the companies that were actually making the content, in order
Speaker 1: to secure exclusive deals, which meant that consumers were faced
Speaker 1: with this problem that, you know, the movies and shows
Speaker 1: they really liked, they might only be available on a
Speaker 1: single format, and that meant that if you wanted those movies,
Speaker 1: you had to buy into that format. And in the beginning,
Speaker 1: the very beginning, it looked like h D DVD might
Speaker 1: have a bit of an edge. UH. First of all,
Speaker 1: it came out a little bit earlier than Blu ray
Speaker 1: by a few months. Secondly, early on, HD DVD attracted
Speaker 1: some major studios onto its side, but Sony would turn
Speaker 1: around and play some pretty brilliant strokes of its own UH.
Speaker 1: And it didn't hurt that Blu ray also had some
Speaker 1: technical advantages on top of that, a big one being
Speaker 1: that it could hold more information than an HD DVD
Speaker 1: disc could, so you could put more onto a Blu Ray.
Speaker 1: For another, Blu Ray could support more advanced piracy prevention
Speaker 1: technologies than HD DVD could. HDDVD had an advantage and
Speaker 1: that it was not quite as expensive, so that was
Speaker 1: a big boost. But Sony's really brilliant move was that
Speaker 1: they built a Blu Ray player into a PlayStation three.
Speaker 1: That meant that you could have a games station, a
Speaker 1: game's console that could also serve as a media player,
Speaker 1: which obviously today that's pretty common thing, but back then
Speaker 1: it was pretty new. Plus those additional protections. That privacy
Speaker 1: protection was really attractive to studios, right They were terrified
Speaker 1: of the thought of losing out on revenue due to piracy,
Speaker 1: so anything that could cut that down was a big
Speaker 1: bonus for them, and one by one studios began to
Speaker 1: side with Sony, until by two thousand and eight it
Speaker 1: was pretty clear that HD DVD was dead in the water,
Speaker 1: Like Warner Brothers left h D DVD, and at that
Speaker 1: point all the major studios had had had jumped ship.
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember attending c E S one year
Speaker 1: where just a couple of weeks before the show, h
Speaker 1: D DVD hold out of c E S. So there
Speaker 1: was this big empty spot on the show floor where
Speaker 1: there was supposed to be an HD DVD booth, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing because you know, again a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks before the show happened, they decided to you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have any good news to share and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to have to face the music at that point.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after that that HD DVD was for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes dead. So Blu Ray one that
Speaker 1: format war, and it meant that all those people who
Speaker 1: got h D DVD players and a library of disks,
Speaker 1: we're stuck with the technology that ultimately went obsolete. Um like,
Speaker 1: once those players stopped working and there's not an easy
Speaker 1: way to repair them. Those discs are you know, paper weights. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we still have format wars going on today,
Speaker 1: some of them have settled into different lines of products
Speaker 1: that can coexist. So like in the early days of
Speaker 1: personal computers, we had several different styles of computers, right,
Speaker 1: you had you know, Commodore sixty four. Uh, you would
Speaker 1: have the Apple, you would have Sinclair machines, you had
Speaker 1: all these different computer systems, and over time they mostly
Speaker 1: shook out two PCs, which really was just shorthand to
Speaker 1: describe any computer that was built upon architecture that IBM
Speaker 1: first offered as a personal computer. And then on the
Speaker 1: other side you had Apple and we continue to have
Speaker 1: that to this day. I mean, there are other ones
Speaker 1: as well, but those are like the two primary ones,
Speaker 1: and they can coexist, they serve different functions. So that
Speaker 1: was a format war that ultimately kind of settled into
Speaker 1: two different lines of products. In other cases, however, we've
Speaker 1: got ongoing format wars that can still cause trouble for consumers,
Speaker 1: including me. So for example, there is HDR, which is
Speaker 1: high dynamic range, and this applies to displays, uh primarily
Speaker 1: things like televisions, but not only television's also computer displays, tablets,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. They can have HDR technology
Speaker 1: in them. But here's the tricky thing. HDR does not
Speaker 1: refer to a specific technology. You don't have just one
Speaker 1: thing that is HDR. HDR is more like a desired outcome.
Speaker 1: High dynamic range is a goal, not a technology unto itself,
Speaker 1: and the outcome is all about creating a large range
Speaker 1: of color intensities and brightnesses so that you can have
Speaker 1: really rich, lush and accurate color representation on screen. You
Speaker 1: can have everything from a dim, dark purple to a bright,
Speaker 1: vibrant yellow and every other color. Right that, the idea
Speaker 1: is that HDR gives you incredibly vibrant pictures. That's the goal.
Speaker 1: The problem is there are different ways to get to
Speaker 1: that goal. There's not just one technological pathway to lead
Speaker 1: to h d R, and there are actually several different
Speaker 1: formats that all aim to do this. The big ones
Speaker 1: are h lg UH, there's Dolby Vision, there's HDR ten
Speaker 1: that's the most common of the formats, and there's HDR
Speaker 1: ten plus. So Dolbie Vision has really incredible capabilities, like
Speaker 1: it is technically one of the most advanced of the
Speaker 1: HDR formats. However, Dolbi Vision is also a proprietary Now
Speaker 1: that means that anyone who wants to make use of
Speaker 1: Dolby Vision, whether it's a television manufacturer right it's a
Speaker 1: it's someone that's creating televisions that are capable of showing
Speaker 1: Dolby Vision, or it's a format like a like a UH.
Speaker 1: Someone who's creating media and they want the media to
Speaker 1: be in Dolbie Vision. No matter what, if you want
Speaker 1: to make use of Dolbie Vision, you have to pay.
Speaker 1: You have to pay a licensing fee, and um companies
Speaker 1: typically don't like having to pay a license fees. If
Speaker 1: they can find a way around it, like if they've
Speaker 1: got a free option, they would much prefer to do
Speaker 1: that because they keep more of the money themselves. So
Speaker 1: HDR ten is an open standard. That's why it's the
Speaker 1: most common because you can use it for free. Like
Speaker 1: you can make use of that open standard, but it's
Speaker 1: not as advanced as doy'll be Vision. So you get
Speaker 1: your HDR output, but it's not as good as if
Speaker 1: you were to use Dolby Vision. Now, all of this
Speaker 1: is on the back end, right, like you have all
Speaker 1: these companies that are making deals about whether or not
Speaker 1: they're going to pay a licensing fee and use something
Speaker 1: like they'll be Vision, or they're going to go with
Speaker 1: an open standard, or maybe they will support multiple ones.
Speaker 1: But on the consumer side, it gets really messy and
Speaker 1: really confusing because not all HDR television's support all HDR formats.
Speaker 1: That's what I find really frustrating about format wars like
Speaker 1: this because You can go out and buy an HDR
Speaker 1: capable TV, but if it only supports say HDR ten,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't necessarily support something like Dolby Vision. And
Speaker 1: you might think, Oh, I'm gonna watch this it's an HDR,
Speaker 1: But if it's an HDR and it uses Dolbi Vision,
Speaker 1: you won't be able to experience the HDR. So this
Speaker 1: is really upsetting to me because it means that you
Speaker 1: actually have to do a lot more homework before you
Speaker 1: go out and buy something. Right. You can't just oh,
Speaker 1: this TV is on sale, I need a new TV.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy it, and then I can watch all
Speaker 1: this stuff maybe or at least maybe with the HDR,
Speaker 1: but you might not be able to if the television
Speaker 1: doesn't support the formats that are available on the media
Speaker 1: you have. By the way, this gets even more complicated
Speaker 1: when you start talking about things you connect to your TV.
Speaker 1: Because let's say that you have like a streaming device.
Speaker 1: Let's say the television is not its own smart TV,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have native access to streaming apps, and you
Speaker 1: have it connected to a streaming device. Well, the streaming
Speaker 1: device also needs to have those same compatibilities. So anywhere
Speaker 1: in a chain. If you are lacking a compatibility, then
Speaker 1: you miss out on that that particular feature. And this
Speaker 1: is really the downside for me for format wars. It's
Speaker 1: why I think standardization is so important because it removes
Speaker 1: that confusion and ambiguity and it improves the customer experience.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean we get the absolute best version
Speaker 1: of whatever that technology is. We might make some compromises.
Speaker 1: But what it does mean is that when you buy
Speaker 1: technology A, you know it can play everything that was
Speaker 1: made for technology A right or whatever. The play is
Speaker 1: too limiting because this goes well beyond media, but that
Speaker 1: is that's the argument for standardization is that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you get the absolute best version of everything, but
Speaker 1: that you can be confident that the version you do
Speaker 1: get is something you can use. That's the big benefit
Speaker 1: of standardization. Now, maybe you one day, you and me
Speaker 1: and everybody else listening to this will all be like
Speaker 1: super wealthy and we won't care, Like we won't care
Speaker 1: if if one format is not compatible with the other,
Speaker 1: because we'll just buy all of them. But I don't
Speaker 1: know about y'all. I do not appear to be on
Speaker 1: that track anytime soon. So for the meantime, I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue being my grouchy old man self and argue
Speaker 1: for standardization. I hope you enjoyed what was going to
Speaker 1: be a Tech Stuff tidbits, but I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my recording right now, and it's as
Speaker 1: long as a normal episode, very typical. Go ahead, get
Speaker 1: your licks in now. I deserve them. If you want
Speaker 1: to chi to be on Twitter for being a chatty Cathy,
Speaker 1: the handle is tech Stuff hs W. Also reach out
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for topics you would love
Speaker 1: for me to cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a technology, a trend in tech, a company, uh,
Speaker 1: an important person in tech, any of those things, let
Speaker 1: me know. Or if there's like a guest you would
Speaker 1: love for me to have on the show. I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed having guests on recently. It's um it's always a
Speaker 1: challenge to schedule those kind of things, but I think
Speaker 1: they bring a lot of value to the show, and
Speaker 1: I know you folks really appreciate getting to listen to
Speaker 1: someone besides just me. So if there's anyone out there
Speaker 1: that you think would be an excellent guest for whatever purpose,
Speaker 1: as long as you know technology related, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me that message tech stuff hsw on Twitter and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.