Microblog Memes

HDDVDs weren’t rejected by the masses they were a casualty in Sony’s vendetta against the loss of Beta and DAT. Both of which were rejected by industry not consumers (though both were later embraced by industry and Betas even outlasted VHSs). They would have won out for the same reasons that Sony lost the previous format wars (insistence on licensing fees) except this time Sony bought out Columbia and had a whole library of video and a studio to make new movies to exclusively release on their format. Essentially the supply side pushing something until consumers accepted it, though to your point not quite as bad as AI is right now.

8-Tracks and laserdiscs were just replaced by better formats (Compact Cassette and Video CD/DVD respectively). Each of them were also replacements for previous formats like Reel to Reel and CEDs.

UMDs only don’t exist still because flash media got better and because Sony opted to use a cheaper scratch resistant coating instead of a built in case for later formats (like Blu-ray). Also, UMDs themselves were a replacement for or at least inspired by an earlier format called MiniDisc.

Capitalism’s biggest feat has been convincing people that everything is the next big thing and nothing that has come before is similar when just about everything is just a rinse and repeat, even LLMs… remember when Watson beat Ken Jennings?