Working in a technology orientated job I’ve been constantly bombarded with questions and answers about the “HD format war”, which according to many people is already winding down. It’s seems the general consensus is “Blu-ray is massively outselling HD DVD (as it should be considering it’s the superior format) and therefore the battle is over, and good ridance, the locking of horns is only slowing down the growth of the industry” or words to that efffect.
But waaaaait a minute! I think there are a few things, in my humble opinion, people are overlooking. Firstly which format is “better”? Well Blu-ray has the greater capacity at 50gb per dual layered disc, whereas HD DVD stands at 30gb per dual layered disc. Fair enough, but what does that mean when we consider what these discs are primarily used for, showing films. It means that you can fit longer films (and of course extra footage) on Blu-ray, which is a good thing but considering HD DVD can still easily fit on a full film and hours of extras on its disc, is the extra capacity necessary? Maybe not but it’s definitely good to have, I’ll give you that. Also when used for data storage this would come in very handy, but that’s not what I’m really talking about here. HD DVD however, also has some good points. Firstly you can watch picture in picture special features. I think this is awesome. This means you can have two seperate video streams playing at the same time. There are loads of applications for this, for example in the HD DVD version of 300 you can see the complete film in all its effects ridden glory while in the corner watch them filming it against the green screen in the studio. Sweet! You could also have directors commentaries with more than just audio. This is something that you can’t do on Blu-ray. Another nice feature is all HD DVD players link to the net to do any software updates but also to visit forums about the movies, even send feed back to the companies who made them. Again this is not something the Blu-ray camp are trying (yet). Both formats are capable of showing VC-1 (the new HD compression) as well as supporting both Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD for audio. They both have the same data transfer rate at 36 MBPS (Megabits per Second). The HD DVD format is similar to the existing DVD disc structure, and therefore requires minimal upgrading and retooling of the existing DVD disc manufacturing and replication plants. Whereas Blu-ray is a new format requiring retooling and/or construction of new disc manufacturing plants, so will cost more money.
So I’m not sure why everyone wants Blu-ray to win. The ‘superior technology’ of Blu-ray seems to consist of higher capacity storage, and that’s it. HD DVD seems to be more inventive with the technology, allowing things that haven’t been done before, and it’s still cheaper. I imagine Blu-ray to move from strength to strength on account of its inclusion in the PS3 (of the 1.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the U.S., 1.4 million are PS3s, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association.) and HD DVD may be left behind, but in my opinion that’s a shame. But to all the people who think this battle between Sony (Blu-ray) and Toshiba (HD DVD) is holding the HD revolution back, I whole heartedly disagree. As each format tries to get one up on the other, the end result gets better and better for us, the consumer. Cheaper, better quality, better features.
However just to throw a spanner in the works, I don’t think Blu-ray will win the HD format war. I think as internet speeds increase, the future of high definition movies will lie in digital downloads and internet streaming. Apple TV, and Microsoft’s xbox live video market are early examples of what’s to come, and just as we saw with music, surely that’ll be the shape of things to come.
jamie_f
07. Aug, 2007
You’re right about the internet taking distribution in another direction entirely, and this can only be a good thing as it entirely goes along with the ‘Long Tail’ idea of niche marketing, opening up the market to independent films, rather than having to rely on having a hit film to make any money.
However, we still need storage! Especially portable, ‘disposable’*, cheap storage, which is where DVDs (and whatever the next generations of that are) come into their own. Flash drives are probably the future of that: SD cards and USB sticks are already fairly ubiquitous, which hasn’t taken very long. Professional storage is probably going to be holographic next (for large volume stuff), but we’re talking consumer products really.
*In the sense of being able to give it away, not throw it away. There’s no excuse for throwing digital storage mediums away as they could be reusable. Hey, thats another point for internet distribution… less waste!
jamie
08. Aug, 2007
You’re right about the internet taking distribution in another direction entirely, and this can only be a good thing as it entirely goes along with the ‘Long Tail’ idea of niche marketing, opening up the market to independent films, rather than having to rely on having a hit film to make any money.
However, we still need storage! Especially portable, ‘disposable’*, cheap storage, which is where DVDs (and whatever the next generations of that are) come into their own. Flash drives are probably the future of that: SD cards and USB sticks are already fairly ubiquitous, which hasn’t taken very long. Professional storage is probably going to be holographic next (for large volume stuff), but we’re talking consumer products really.
*In the sense of being able to give it away, not throw it away. There’s no excuse for throwing digital storage mediums away as they could be reusable. Hey, thats another point for internet distribution… less waste!
paul
08. Aug, 2007
Cheers, Mike, that was informative like what are for the brain. Obviously, comparisons are gonna be brought up between this battle and previous simliar sparring matches in the media marketplace, like the battle between Betamax and VHS. Hopefully this’ll bounce well onto the consumer.
The DVD market’ll have to adapt, no question. I would hate to think that a hard-copy world was about to end, though. I think your DVD and music collections are extensions of your personality, and I take pride in showing mine off. I think a lot of people appreciate the quality of this. Very exciting, though, all this downloadable and streaming shnizzle, I just hope the emotional, sentimental, memorific(?!) etc etc value of the actual product isn’t lost, as I think it may be slightly now with downloadable music.
paul
08. Aug, 2007
Cheers, Mike, that was informative like what are for the brain. Obviously, comparisons are gonna be brought up between this battle and previous simliar sparring matches in the media marketplace, like the battle between Betamax and VHS. Hopefully this’ll bounce well onto the consumer.
The DVD market’ll have to adapt, no question. I would hate to think that a hard-copy world was about to end, though. I think your DVD and music collections are extensions of your personality, and I take pride in showing mine off. I think a lot of people appreciate the quality of this. Very exciting, though, all this downloadable and streaming shnizzle, I just hope the emotional, sentimental, memorific(?!) etc etc value of the actual product isn’t lost, as I think it may be slightly now with downloadable music.