People are stupid. Of course, they are generally stupid at all times, but become especially so when shielded by the anonymity provided by the Internet. That's why I rarely read the comments posted by users on product pages, news stories, or videos. Because, when I do, I just end up frustrated, as I really can't abide ignorant, stupid people. Yesterday, however, I broke this rule and read the comments at the end of a news story on the sales related to the end of the HD video format war. I was so frustrated that it prompted this blog.
For anyone who has been completely oblivious to the happenings on the HD video front for the past few years, I'll offer a brief rundown. The standard DVDs which we have been using for the past decade can hold, at most, about 8 GB of information. This is not enough to store a movie at High Definition quality. As a result, two new formats were developed: Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-Ray. Both of these formats were capable of producing virtually identical full HD pictures and uncompressed sound. HD-DVD has a capacity of about 30 GB and Blu-Ray has a maximum capacity of 50 GB. Most other differences were superficial, at least as far as consumers were concerned. Some effort was made to combine the two formats, but both sides were unwilling to make concessions to allow that to happen. As a result, both formats went on the market in the spring of 2006, creating the format war. Both formats required special players in order to be used, and each format could only be used on the correct type of player. This forced consumers to choose a side, to buy either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. To make matters more confusing, the film studios also chose sides, with Sony, Disney, and Fox going Blu-Ray and Universal going HD-DVD. Warner Bros. and Paramount/Dreamworks supported both formats. That was the situation until Fall 2007. At that point Paramount/Dreamworks announced that it would become HD-DVD exclusive. Shortly thereafter, Blockbuster US announced that it would only carry Blu-Ray. Then in January 2008, Warner Bros. announced that it would switch exclusively to Blu-Ray, catching the HD-DVD group so off guard that they cancelled their presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show, which was to occur the same week as the announcement. Early in February, Best Buy announced that they would be "heavily favouring" the Blu-Ray format in their stores. The final nail in the HD-DVD coffin came courtesy of, who else, Wal-Mart when they announced that they would stop carrying the HD-DVD format. On February 15th, word leaked out that Toshiba was about to close its HD-DVD plants in Japan, and the official announcement came on February 19th - HD-DVD was dead.
Throughout the duration of the format war there was abundant flaming on the Internet, courtesy of both sides. Now that it's over, that flaming shows no signs of abating, particularly from the (rightfully) pissed off owners of now worthless HD-DVD hardware and software. I don't have a problem with them being upset, but I do have a problem with both sides insistence on using lies to try to strengthen their argument.
So, first, was either format superior? No, not really. Both were capable of roughly the same things, with Blu-Ray having a slight advantage by way of higher max capacity the the ability to perform branching playback (if you don't know what that means, that just shows you how unimportant it will be to your life). As a large number of Blu-Ray fans are ardent Sony supporters, they like to claim that the large number of Blu-Ray players built into every PS3 won them the war. Again, this is not exactly true. While it did massively increase the number of players in consumers hands, there's no good evidence to prove that most of them are being used as Blu-Ray players at all. By looking at the sales figures for stand alone players and software, Blu-Ray consistently outsold HD-DVD, often by a margin of two to one.
The HD-DVD supporters like to blame Warner Bros. for switching sides and killing their format, especially since they accepted a large sum of money from the Blu-Ray Group to do so. Again, not at all true. First of all, the writing was on the wall. The momentum was clearly in Blu-Ray's favour, and the market could no longer bear two competing formats. By winter 2007 it was clear this thing was going to go Blu-Ray's way, it was just a matter of time. It would have happened with or without Warner Bros. Second, yes, Warner did take money from the Blu-Ray group to switch. However, the HD-DVD group was offering a comparable amount of money to switch exclusively to their side. Furthermore, the exact same thing had happened in the fall with Paramount/Dreamworks, Paramount just took the money from the other side. Finally, as was expressed by the heads of both Warner Bros. and Paramount after their respective deals, the amount of money involved in the payoff was insignificant compared with the potential gains (or loses) associated long term with the HD video business.
This war had to end, and it had to end now. The market just couldn't bear it any longer. Not only were sales of the high def formats below what they should have been, as consumer support was divided, but standard DVD sales were down as well. This is because consumers were aware that a new format was on the horizon and did not want to purchase a film on regular DVD that they would soon want to buy in HD. But, since there were two formats for HD, they also didn't want to commit to either one just yet, for fear of winding up on the losing side, as memories of Matsushita's VHS versus Sony's Betamax format war were still fresh in their minds. So, now that the war is over, the industry can finally move forward, with everyone using the same format.
But will Blu-Ray replace DVD? Personally, I don't think so. Most people don't see enough of a difference, and their still isn't a high enough installed base of HDTV's to make it worth most people's time. It will likely remain a niche market. The next big revolution in home entertainment will be digital delivery. Companies like Microsoft, Toshiba, and others are already at work on new server solutions that will allow all home media - video, music, pictures, everything - to be stored in one place and then transmitted throughout the house. Rather than owning anything physical, all content will be delivered directly to this server. This isn't exactly a future I'm looking forward to, since the media companies have such a horrible track record with user friendly DRM, but I do think it's where we're headed. But at least the war is over, for now.
Sleep well,
DTE
