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Next DVD Format War Still Wide Open
An anonymous reader writes "Despite the wishes of partisan players like Sony and Toshiba, many consumer electronics manufacturers are opting to support both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs in upcoming media players." From the article: "Consumer electronics maker LG Electronics and PC maker Fujitsu-Siemens both said on Thursday they would keep their options open after computer giant Hewlett-Packard said last month it would back HD DVD as well as Blu-ray. Bjorn Sehrm, senior director Digital Home of Fujitsu-Siemens, told Reuters: 'We are planning to put both in. We don't take a stand in that fight, and actually we're very sorry that fight is happening.'
I was just driving around in the metro Detroit area only to notice that Toshiba is going promos for HD DVD at most of the electronics joints. They are spewing this stuff over the local radio stations so I stopped in.
Most consumers seem to be blown away. I think that being first to market ("later this month") will be a big win for HD DVD.
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If you're only going to support one, people will not buy 'til they know which format is going to win and wait it out before buying a $1000+ piece of electronics that is obsolete in a year when the war is over.
By supporting both, you can convince people to buy, because no matter which format it's going to be, you will be able to play it. If they cannot see where the balance is going, they will not buy at all. Not having something is still better than having something that has no support anymore in a year.
Thus the strongest pushers in one or the other direction, insisting on supporting only one format, are not going to sell many of their players.
And, in turn, of their consoles. Sony will most likely only support BluRay in their PS3. If BluRay loses the format war, this would be a serious blow to their sales.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Danger: what follows is strictly opinion. Thank you.
I think the new generation of what becomes the evolution of the digital versatile disk will have to pass the BetaMax test. Most folks who have the money to purchase "the next big technology" of video interaction have either experienced or heard about the VHS vs. BetaMax battle. Without exception, the people to whom I have spoken (about next-generation "DVD") have said, "I'm waiting until the dust settles, and then I'll start thinking about buying one of the new-technology devices." The second thing they have said (again, without exception) is, "I hope the players will play my stack of old-format DVDs."
I have the strong feeling that the manufacturers and implementers will fight it out, and the consumer will watch and wait. Whomever wins out will get the lion's share of the "going forward" business.
Something that is very important to me: I hope that the "battle" will be short-lived. Here's to hoping that once things settle, the economies of scale and availability will make the next generation DVD-type disks (and players) quickly affordable.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Another concern is that newer media formats might not have the life cycle of CD and DVD. CDs are still useful and have been around a couple of decades, CDs are scratch tolerant, etc. DVDs still work, but are more fragile. How well do Blu-Ray and HD-DVD stand up?
Benefits of new format:
Disadvantages of new format:
If people start buying these things in droves, then the studios will be able to stop DVD production, and force the rest of us to use them too if we want any new content.
But, a combination of lack of clear benefits, together with excessive DRMing, and lack of a clear format winner, will hopefully mean that these players will be ignored and flop. In which case the studios aren't going to stop making DVDs even though they'd like to.
If they do take off, I can't wait for the first mandatory firmware upgrade that breaks a whole bunch of players. I'd love to see the studios explain what they are going to do about that.
Unless the DRM is removed (which isn't likely), then the only interest I have in this technology is watching it fail as a film format, then become available as a cheap data storage format for computers. Shame really, cos I like films.
Z.
I think Sony's Playstation team is deliberately holding up the PS3 launch because they aren't at all sure Blu-ray will win. PS3 will certainly die if it has a completely unwanted component that makes up for a third of its cost.
This is a very good point and one that I have wondered myself. With the increase in data density, a scratch is really going to be very bad for your media.
What I was wondering is if perhaps vendors could use the high capacity of this new generation of optical media to put a redundancy on the disk. I know that this would cut down on the maximum capacity of the disk, but, as far as I'm concerned, the current data capacity works just fine in 90% of all cases. Adding a data redundancy (perhaps at a reduced quality) would be a good way to help protect media from crippling scratches and the like.
The first question that would pop into my mind about making a redundancy such as this is "how is it going to be accessed on the fly?". My solution would be if hardware manufactures supporting a caching feature for the redundancy so that it can be accessed from the memory if a disk read fails to keep up.
I know that this will probably not happen, but I still think that this would be an extremely good use of the extra data capacity of these disks. I would feel a lot more comfortable knowing that not only was my media protected my a new extra scratch resistant polymer, but also a redundancy in case I'm actually able to scratch the thing. I consider myself an expert in the field of scratching CD/DVDs.