Blu-Ray or HD-DVD -- perhaps neither will win the war

[Xylob the Destroyer]

this article makes a good point
nobody asked the consumers what they wanted
just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should

http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=15323

...The problem is that nobody asked us consumers what we wanted, and most people will probably wait until one wins before laying out any money. There’s also a strong possibility that everybody’s wallets will stay closed out of indifference. It may turn out that this next generation of discs is rendered irrelevant, unwanted, unnecessary, or, at best, a niche product for deep-pocketed folks, much like LaserDiscs and DAT (digital audio tape)...

LaserDiscs and DAT....
oh what vague memories I have of those "wonders" of data storage.

[ROF]

I agree with most of that article. You can call me when next gen burners drop below $300. As a movie format, I have no desire to upgrade at the current costs. I own a high definition home theater, but I really have no desire to upgrade my movie player/recorder. Maybe 3-4 years from now or if prices drop considerably my thoughts may change but I am quite happy with the current level of display on DVD and my current High Def satisfaction is provided through services I pay a monthly fee for.

[adam]

You ask the consumer what they want by releasing a product and seeing who buys it. Its not ideal having two competing formats but its not like they just have their heads up their butts and whoops, we may be ignoring what the consumer actually wants. These are two competing technologies that have been in development for years. Both had millions of dollars invested long before any mention of a format war. How can one or the other just stop for the sake of keeping things simple? Its a free market, you have a right to release your product. I would have liked for them to consolidate and create a single unified format, but it didn't happen and honestly I can't really blame them. Both are in this for the long haul. That's what happens when you invest 10's (100's ?) of millions of dollars into a product.

Will the format wars frustrate customer acceptance of High Definition DVDs and slow the transition? Absolutely. But you can't blame the companies for this, that's like giving Ford a hard time for not just joining up with Chevy.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

at least this time around, the newer generation of players will be backward compatible with the old
BluRay and HD-DVD machines will play standard def DVD's as well as CD's.
at least there won't be a need to repurchase movies that you already have on DVD.
i believe most folks will take the "wait and see" approach, as will I.
many people are still taking this stand on HD TV's.
a unified format on these blue laser products would certainly be beneficial in getting quicker acceptance by consumers and a much better market saturation.

[ROF]

surprisingly enough there are also quite a large segment of people who don't own a DVD player because they refused to upgrade from their current library of vhs tapes.

[adam]

I am positively thrilled about HD formats and even I don't plan on buying a single disc or an HD TV until things settle down and by that I don't mean that I am going to wait until one format beats the other. Personally I think that will never happen just like +r/w and -r/w are still "battling."

Eventually manufacturers will start making universal players that play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray and eventually production costs will go down and they will become reasonable in price. Then you'll just buy the movie you want and not worry about whether it comes in the red case or the blue case.

[waheed]

Eventually manufacturers will start making universal players that play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray...

Samsung has taken the first step (though it mentioned drive, not player):

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=289899

[ipdave]

I may just wait for holographic DVD (300Gb and up, coming 2006)!

[shelbyGT]

Are the holographic discs even going to get into this arena? So far I haven't heard anything about a standalone holo player...

[ozymango]

Eventually manufacturers will start making universal players that play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray and eventually production costs will go down and they will become reasonable in price. Then you'll just buy the movie you want and not worry about whether it comes in the red case or the blue case.

I like that idea, but realistically I suspect this pretty much flies in the face of one thing you mentioned earlier -- "[Blu-Ray and HD-DVD backers] are in this for the long haul. That's what happens when you invest 10's (100's ?) of millions of dollars into a product." I agree with this statement, and so I don't think the backers of either format will be (at least for the time being) having much interest in having machines out there that'll work for either format.

So I don't think that there'll be any great rush for Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD patent holders to license such a machine, not without paying through the nose for it. It's simply not in their economic interest to license dual-format type players because that helps the other guy profit. So I expect a dual-format deck to sell for twice the price of a single-format deck, at least, and for quite a long time. Assuming it even gets licensed.

But yeah, ultimately the consumers are gonna decide, and if one format starts selling better than the other, I won't be suprised for the "not-as-popular" format to start offering bigger and better features or something to attract customers (sorta like Beta first tried Hi-Fi, then SuperBeta, then ED Beta, to compete against VHS, to the customers' benefit if not Sony's!). So that could be good.

But the situtation is not quite the same as the VHS/Beta "wars" in that there realistically wasn't anything else like it at the time (home video, that is). So there was a quantum shift, allowing you to record and play movies at home. With HD formats, you've also got things like cable delivery, and hard-drive based devices that can, either right now or very soon in the future, deliver the goods that HD discs do, or close enough. So there's that competition as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD "battle" turned into something like the Laserdisc/CED disc "battle" of years ago, where one format became a clear champion to afficionados but failed to ignite mass interest among your common cheapskates.

In any case, this is a lot of fun to sit back and watch to see what happens next!

EDIT: Also I think the "battle" in a way will have very little to do with the TV/movie viewing end of things -- it's games and storage that'll generate the $$$ for both these systems. That is, I don't think Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will live or die based on movie releases, it'll be all about the games. After all, there's no need for compatability among media formats if we're talking game consoles -- you can't play an xbox game on a PSP, so the format is the non-issue, actually, it's the game that drives the sales.

Because I suspect that most movie studios will release films on standard DVD for a long time, regardless of what HD method they also release them on, I don't think movie content will drive people to choose one format over the other, because they'll stick with their old DVD player for a while.

Finally, I'll make my standard prediction that whatever disc format you see on the shelves more and more at your local porno shop for XXX movies, that's the format to bet on in the long haul!!! Seriously, I just heard somewhere (don't quote me) that the XXX movie industry outperformed (pardon the pun!) Hollywood's box office income in 2005. Is anybody surprised? :P

[adam]

I don't think the backers of either format will be (at least for the time being) having much interest in having machines out there that'll work for either format.

Well that's exactly how it was with dvd-r and dvd+r at first. Then sony made a dual drive and everybody jumped on board. Not all hardware manufacturers fall within one camp or the other. If a major manufactuer of HD-DVD players tells blu-ray they want to manufacturer a dual player. that is huge leverage. You either give up that manufacturer to the competitor or you bring them on board. At some point I don't think the camps will be able to afford to stay completely isolated.

Also there is already a burner coming out that will support both formats so I don't think it would be unheard of for the same to happen with players. It will take a long time but hey, most of us will be waiting anyway for the price to come down.

[ozymango]

Well that's exactly how it was with dvd-r and dvd+r at first. Then sony made a dual drive and everybody jumped on board.

Maybe Sony learned their lesson with Betamax?

Although one thing that did help that move faster -- at least you could play both DVD-R and DVD+R discs (for the most part) in a plain vanilla DVD player. So having the players in place already, that could play a "universal" format, made thing really just a one-disc playing field. That is, despite differences in discs so that some don't play in some machines for various reasons, that's the (hopeful) exception with standard DVDs, not the rule.

So I could see that slowing people from buying stand-alone hi-def DVD players, because your average consumer is also thinking, "I don't want to replace this deck next month, I'll wait unti a machine plays both formats." That may be an overstatement but I'm coming from the perspective that this board is a good example of people who are *very* into video, and I see a lot of posts here from those happy and ready to buy (if they haven't yet bought) a hi-def television, but there's a lot more reticence (sp?) on buying a hi-def DVD player. Until some of this gets sorted.

I know I agree that the dual-format deck is the wave of the future, meaning I won't be buying a machine until it handles both discs. And at that point, there is no format war -- they've both won (or lost!).

Of course a lot of this is just guesswork on my part, based on observation and gut hunches and I won't be surprised if something totally different happens six months down the road and the whole thing changes yet again!

EDIT: Also when you come down to it, in the long run I can't imagine any movie studio objecting to a dual-format player because to them, they don't care about the delivery method, they just want sales of units (of movie discs). So whatever sells the most discs, makes them happy. In the old days of VHS and Beta, you physically had to make two different kinds of media just to be playable, so if a studio can stick with one form of media and leave it to the hardware people to make a 75 cent chip that'll allow that disk to play in another machine, I'll bet the studios would be more than happy with that! Except Sony! But then Sony pretty much always has to be dragged kicking and screaming into playing nice with others. Not that I'll ever give up my Beta decks!!!! :P

[shelbyGT]

I'm still holding out on buying a hidef TV until prices for a nice 42" plasma or LCD hit below $1,500... preferable $1,200.

I already have the 360, so for now hidef gaming will be enough. Hidef movies will wait even longer.......

[rijir2001]

Rather than Blue-Ray they should have gone with those FMD discs that 3M come up with that could hold Terra Bytes worth of data on hundreds of layers. And those players played standard DVDs as well.

In a few years people will be complaining about the storage limits of HD and Blue Ray discs.

[mbellot]

I'm still holding out on buying a hidef TV until prices for a nice 42" plasma or LCD hit below $1,500... preferable $1,200.

Thats a start, but they also need to get MTBF above 6-7 years.

My 36" Mitsubishi tube TV is still going strong after 10.5 years and I have absolutely no plans to replace it until it dies.

But then I'm one of the "common cheapskates" referred to earlier in the thread.

[SilverBlade]

Maybe Sony learned their lesson with Betamax?

I really doubt they ever did, look at their history

Memory stick over compact flash or secure digital
DVD+R over DVD-R
Minidisc over mp3
Atrac over mp3
Arcoos encryption over none

I don't think they will 'get it' unless they are hit hard. Mp3 players like the Ipod flew off the shelves, while their "better" minidisc/Atrac players collected dust, and now are no longer sold in the big box stores (in Canada anyays). That's just one example of how they don't learn their lesson.

[mikesbytes]

Well that's exactly how it was with dvd-r and dvd+r at first. Then sony made a dual drive and everybody jumped on board. Not all hardware manufacturers fall within one camp or the other. If a major manufactuer of HD-DVD players tells blu-ray they want to manufacturer a dual player. that is huge leverage. You either give up that manufacturer to the competitor or you bring them on board. At some point I don't think the camps will be able to afford to stay completely isolated.

When the first dvd+\-r drive came out, everyone stopped buying the + or - ones pretty quickly. Unless there is a significant price barrier to a dual format high definition drive, once they hit the market, I suspect that no one will be the single format ones.

[cal_tony]

I don't game so the only importance to me in the new formats is price and availability of HD stand alone writers to record TV programs. For movies, DVD's will be around for a very long time. Most movies out now don't even maximize the 480p spec. Except for cgi blockbusters and outdoor panoramic scenes most movies wouldn't benefit from the 1080i spec.anyway.
With all the talk about broadcast flags etc. it may turn out that the product of choice is the one that can be most easily circumvented. or mabe even the opposite.