HD-DVD loses Format War: Does anyone care? February 19th, 2008

I’m sure everyone knows that Toshiba officially stopped supporting HD-DVD today. And I’m also sure you’ve heard that now Blu-Ray has a tough road ahead as it competes against downloaded content and standard definition DVDs. I’m here to figure out whether HD physical disks actually have a place in this world, and if the loss of HD-DVD will really make a difference.

HD Formats: Reason for physical disks?

This is one of those questions that really depends on personal preference. In this ever-more digital world, do physical disks have a place in the HD scene? I think this is where the fall of HD-DVD will make the biggest difference. Without an inexpensive competitor, what will really make Blu-ray less expensive? Are people willing to wait for the price of production to come down enough for Blu-Ray to become a practical purchase? I think that since more and more people are becoming familiar with downloadable content, and the tech savvy crowd is only moderately interested in another physical, DRM-infested format, Blu-Ray will never take over as the primary physical content storage device. Without the interest typically provided by the tech savvy people of the world, I believe this format will fail. It’s nothing against Blu-Ray particularly that makes me think this, but the price of this hardware and the disks, even a few years after its initial introduction, is still too high. I still see individual Blu-ray disks (for storage) at $20-25. That’s almost a dollar per gigabyte! What are they thinking with this? The disks can’t be that expensive to make. Why should I switch to these disks when I can get 100 DVDs for the same price? Since this hardware is expensive, and even if you intend to use it mostly for movies, the only practical player to select is the Playstation 3, and that’s $400 at the minimum. This isn’t that bad, considering you get a gaming console as well, but why is it the only player on the market that will support BSD2.0? Not to mention, why release a new version of the format so soon after its birth? I just don’t see this product surviving; downloadable content is much easier for the consumer, and eventually another format will be released to the market at a much lower price with higher storage capabilities.

Pricing and Advertising

Another serious problem with Blu-Ray is the confusion surrounding it. The majority of the people don’t see it as a product they need to or even want to have. The majority of people don’t have an HDTV. As soon as they see the word “high definition” they immediately think it’s not something they need or can even use, and the high price justifies this to them even more. I think the main problem for this is lack of advertising of benefits, lack of good, accurate displays of the capabilities of this format, and a general consensus that this product is designed for the upper 10%. I think that the price of movies is fine, and I also feel that the players will eventually settle on a decent price range. However, the Blu-Ray providers need to increase their interest in the data storage and computer market. The more resilient coating on Blu-Ray should be of HUGE benefit to the majority of computer users. This would make backups of data last longer, be easier to carry around, and you can put almost 3x as much on one Blu-Ray single layer disk as a dual layer DVD. If computers began including Blu-Ray burners and the price of the media was decreased, I think there would be an increased acceptance of this format.

Format War: Over before it began

I think the real problem here is that two groups of companies decided to start this little war. It sure seems like the more and more it goes on, the less and less your average consumer has any interest in either product. If the two groups had joined together, combined concepts from each technology, they would have a product that would make the majority of people happy, and could probably produce players at a decreased price as well as the media. It seems like both sides were just missing the point entirely, that no matter how good it looks, or how good it runs, you have to promote the abilities of the product to the market in order to get people to transfer over to it. For the sake of HD content I hope something happens soon, because I’m very impressed with the content that is available. But unless Blu-Ray prices go down, or a new format arrives on the scene, I just don’t see it gaining much traction in the market for at least another 5-10 years. Even downloadable content is questionable, because you miss out on a huge segment of the market; those people without internet or with a dial-up internet connection. Hopefully something changes soon, or else we will have all sorts of HD content and nothing to do with it!

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