I've refrained from commenting on this for a while but it's time to talk a bit about this rediculous high definition format war. Like many wars, the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war was fought for one reason and justified by another. The justification was that the two camps could not agree on a common media format, the reason for the war honestly had very little to do with media formats.
You see, both sides realized very early on that regardless of whether Blu-ray or HD-DVD won, removable media was not the way of the future. No matter how hard you try and spin it, neither format will achieve the success that DVD has. Online distribution of content is the future and both camps realize this, but its easy to gain support for a war if you can get everyone behind something as simple as media format to argue about.
The truth of the matter is that all parties have their own vested interests in winning the battle. The Blu-ray camp panders to the fears of the movie industry by touting a more secure format thanks to its BD+ security layer that sits atop AACS. Microsoft promises easier implementation of interactive features by using XML-based iHD rather than compiled code. Each side will do or say whatever it takes to win and it's gotten to the point where the movie studios have been convinced into signing exclusive agreements to only distribute content on one format or another.
I don't even have to get into why this is beyond stupid, the end customer of the movie studios are the consumers, not the leaders of the Blu-ray or HD-DVD camps. And by only offering titles on a single format these studios are alienating their own customers, this applies to Paramount as much as it does to Warner. I had hoped that the war would be won not by declaring a victor, but by the proliferation of dual-format players or discs being released in both formats, not by exclusive deals that hurt only the consumer.
Initially I was a fan of Blu-ray, mostly because the disc specs made more sense to me. Obviously HD-DVD has its advantages from a production standpoint, but making discs at a low cost isn't my concern, just give me the content on a single format and give me as much storage space as possible. However, I wasn't a fan of the pricing on most Blu-ray players.
Toshiba did its best to drive HD-DVD prices down and given that two major backers of the standard are Microsoft and Intel, pushing for quick commoditization of HD-DVD players makes a lot of sense. The Blu-ray camp however is full of players (no pun intended) who are far less interested in the commoditization of playback devices and thus we end up with devices that are more expensive than they should be. Given that the internals of modern day HD-DVD and Blu-ray players don't differ enough to justify the price difference (which admittedly has shrunk at times), I believe what we're looking at is a difference of approach in how to handle the high-def war. I tend to side with whoever is giving me the best bang for my buck.
I remember talking about this whole mess with an industry insider not too long ago, who felt that by Christmas 2008 we'd see the end of the war, much in the way that I described it. Both formats will exist, but content will be equally available on both (either that or dual-format players would be the way of the future). The Warner announcement does throw a wrench in that plan, and maybe it will spell the end for HD-DVD, or maybe it'll just make this thing drag out even longer. The quicker we get this war over with the sooner we can get to the war that's really going to matter: online distribution.
All the DRM, lawsuits and finger pointing of poor music sales are going to happen once more as soon as online video distribution really takes off. The statistics speak for themselves, people would much rather get their video content online than off, it's a question of how will you get the content, how are you allowed to use it and how much will it cost?
I'm afraid that the online distribution battle for video will be even worse than it has been for music, which means even more lawsuits, even more throttling and pollution of P2P networks and overall unpleasantness. It took how long for Amazon to come up with a DRM-free music store? Can you imagine how long it's going to take for us to see the same with high defintion movies?
Maybe I picked the wrong time to start building a theater.
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