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Lessons From the HD Format War
mlimber writes "The New York Times' Freakonomics blog asks a panel of experts, 'Is the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray really over? What can we learn from it?' The panel suggests, among other things, that Sony achieved a Pyrrhic victory because high-def DVDs will be outmoded before they reap enough profits to make up for what they (and Toshiba) paid out for both product development and bribes to win the support of content providers."
No one really cares.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Yeah, Brian, so now that the war has ended, go and buy that hd-dvd player you've been wanting! Don't forget to pick up a car load of hd-dvd movies while you're out!
i took a bitchslapping for natalie portman
The merits or flaws of either side can be overcome by paying people off
I get really annoyed every time this gets brought up with the claims that any benefits Bluray gives will soon be overshadowed by HD download services. HD download services are great, except I see a few problems with it.
1 - Heavy DRM - Yes Bluray has DRM too, but you can TAKE IT WITH YOU. The technology is still prohibitively expensive to start making portable bluray players, and in dash bluray players for cars, but there is NO HD download service I'm aware that lets you burn the files and keep them forever to watch. They are mostly rental services - basically you download them on your Apple TV or computers, watch it in a 24 hour period and its gone. In time, those devices will be made cheaper, and will become reasonably priced.
2 - Downloadable content doesn't look nearly as good a trueHD stuff does. I realize that for many people it doesn't matter, because the majority of TV's that were purchased early on (and therefore a big chunk of the ones in households) are only 720P. But 1080 displays are becoming the new standard and fewer 720 displays are being made. a 3GB 720 file doesn't offer much more clarity than just a standard DVD. Yes I know, many people are going to shout that DVD's are GOOD ENOUGH. Fine. VCR tapes were GOOD ENOUGH too. So are YouTube videos for some people. Big whoop. Watching low quality 720p on a 1080 display just doesn't look as good as a true 1080 picture with 25-35Mbit quality.
3. To get a decent quality picture, you need to have download a big file, and that requires fast internet connections. American download speeds are pitiful compared to the rest of the world. If you wanted to download a 5GB movie, that's going to take you SEVERAL hours to complete, as opposed to just driving a few miles to the nearest blockbuster r RedBox (which WILL be getting bluray discs inevitably)
4. Bluray adoption has taken off faster than DVD adoption did. I somehow doubt people are going to give up on buying discs they can KEEP and watch OVER AND OVER, with a download service that offers inferior quality, short watching time, and long waits to watch. But who knows, maybe in 2 years from now I'll be eating those words, but I doubt. Anything you can say about HD downloads applies to SD quality movies as well, and DVD sales aren't really being eaten into like people predicted it would downloadable content. Begin modding me down...NOW!
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
This format war was fought through movie studios, but interestingly most consumers don't really care what discs their movies come on. Whether on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the movies play essentially the same way. Hell, DVDs are good enough for movies -- the resolution is good enough, and the run-time of a DVD is longer than the length of time that you can sit still on your butt.
On the other hand, DVDs will soon become obsolete as a data storage medium. Remember when an entire OS came on a CD-ROM, and you could back up your hard drive onto a couple of DVD+-R? Now operating systems come on DVDs, and only sane backup medium for most consumers is another hard disk. For that, I'm glad that the higher-capacity Blu-Ray standard won, and hopefully Blu-Ray burners will be cheap enough by the time the need arises.
I wouldn't be surprised if Blu-Ray movies never replace DVDs, but Blu-Ray burners become standard on computers.
I learned that the kind of insane balkanization of consumer products that we see with gaming consoles is spreading to other areas. That the us vs. them rhetoric that was once only found in the realms of religion and politics is now bleeding into online flame wars about which corporate-backed digital movie format is better.
Electricity wars (AC vs DC), tape wars (VHS vs BETA, 8 track vs cassette) or HD Format wars are nothing new and if nobody learnt then, why should anyone learn this time around?
Engineering is the art of compromise.