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Are Blu-ray, HD DVD Incentives Changing the Format War?
Both the software and hardware sides have seen heavy promotion.
Here in Canada, retailer Future Shop (a subsidiary of Best Buy) is promoting select Blu-ray and HD-DVD titles at 2 for
There are rumors raging across the blogosphere that Circuit City is unloading their HD DVD player inventory, not as a "get ready for the new model" move, but as a strategic shift toward backing Blu-ray.
At press time, Circuit City had not supplied me with an official statement on their position.
Reading the sale flyers in my mailbox for the past few weeks, the retail offers for Blu-ray have been extremely aggressive. Through the big-box retailers, Panasonic, Sony and Sharp have all been offering free Blu-ray players bundled up with flat panel televisions.
Some industry watchers (myself included) have called foul on this, asserting that getting a free player with a TV you would have bought anyways is hardly indicative of swelling consumer demand. (Especially considering that Panasonic and Sharp are industry leaders and the darlings of Consumer Reports in the plasma and LCD categories, respectively.)
But is any of this indicative of either HD optical disc format gaining traction with consumers? Or are these last ditch Hail Mary plays on the part of both camps?
In my opinion, bundling hardware along with TV purchases seems like a last ditch effort to increase the installed base, even at the cost of devaluing the product as not just a commodity, but a freebie.
Even though more industry watchers are declaring HD DVD's death, I can't help but wonder if the Blu-ray camp knows that they have a limited amount of time to press their advantage before HD downloads make the whole struggle moot.
With iTunes' now offering sales and rentals of HD movies and with the expected growth of media centers, you don't have to look to far into the future to see the end of the sidewalk for physical media.
Last March, tech guru Paul Kedrosky described the format war as "two dog packs fighting over a decomposing bone." His quip is starting to look even more correct than it did a year ago.
So far, we know what's going in in retail, and we always know what the fanboys on either side who fill up the comments section think, but I'd like to hear input from integrators about what's actually happening in custom.
Are any of you installing any players that aren't a Playstation 3? What are your clients asking about, and how are you answering them?
Let us know in the comments below.
Lee Distad is a freelance CEDIA Certified Professional Designer who offers design and process consultation to firms in the Custom Installation industry, as well as copy writing and other professional writing services. Lee’s business and industry blog can be read at http://www.leedistad.com
This story was updated at 1:00 PM EST to fix the price of Future Shop's promos, as pointed out by commenters Daniel, Craig and Stephen.
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36 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
“As for DRM, I am in no way trying to say it is good or even endorsing it. I think it sucks. I am merely saying that it is how it can be utilized to refute your point of being an issue of practicality, not convenience.”
You misunderstood why I brought copyrighting up in the first place and proceeded to argue from the point of departure… I implied multiple arguments in my original statement by being vague; you only picked one potential argument. It is much more than one or two issues, it is all the issues that copyrighting brings with it. In any case, if you consider your solution practical, I guarantee 99.99% of the world (or more) won’t consider your solution practical or convenient.
Of course, people can still break the DRM with a little bit of time and a memory dump ( 
), but why should we have to steal it to get fair usage? I would rather just buy the disc, since I don’t steal…
“Services like Fios and UVerse do not limit your bandwidth usage.”
That is a big YET. It will be mainstream for companies to limit bandwidth eventually. It is their only other option besides the abolition of Net Neutrality. They will not be able to abolish Net Neutrality, so the big companies will all eventually go down this path in order to make money. These are businesses after all.
“And for the last time. If a Blu Ray or HD DVD movie is 15gb in Disc Form… you would not be downloading anywhere near this size file.”
I don’t know about that. Not according to this thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=750870
If you want to replace the movie disc with a download those numbers are more realistic than the 15 GB you keep offering. Plus, it looks like they are discussing movie sizes, not disc sizes… I’ll ask on that thread, just to make sure.
As for the rest of your post, it is like I said, the technology is only useful for a very small number of people ATM. I didn’t say it can’t be done, just that it isn’t practical enough for large scale consumer usage, so it hasn’t arrived in a manner that would be competitive yet (i.e. it isn’t “here yet” as a viable alternative to owning the HD disc for the mainstream consumer base, nor is it close)... That was the whole point though, that it isn’t in any position at this point to be a threat to the movie distribution systems that are already in place, i.e., “the future is not now yet.”
Is it a threat in the future… Not if it doesn’t get any better than OnDemand picture quality, and not if people can’t burn it to a disc and easily transport it around their house to different units (or at the least have it on a house server and be able to WiFi it to every TV in the house without having considerable technical background…). We are pretty far away from that being the case IMO. Though we are making steps and will reach those goals eventually I wager, if Global Warming doesn’t destroy us first.
Jeff,
Sorry to hijack this thread and make it about you and me. But, it seems like your two main points are, that while downloading is possible now, it’s not a threat or feasable for the masses…. of which I also agree. Secondly, DRM blows and in should no way be an acceptable form of control… I also agree.
So it seems we don’t really have much to continue on here, except to say thanks for the intelligent coversation,... it’s sometimes hard to find normal, calm, rational discussions on some of these forums.
Jason,
My post was a response to the one made before mine by Peter von Nostrand (quoted in my post). Taken in that context it may mean something slightly different than it seemed to mean otherwise. I didn’t realize I was arguing with someone else until the last post (DOH! How embarrassing…).
Thank you to you as well!
Jason, you might find this of interest (concerning Verizon leaving the door open for future network throttling):
Interesting article on Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and the viability of downloadable video:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/technology/16toshiba.html?_r=1&hp;&oref;=slogin
Thanks for the post Jeff.
I’m not sure why you want to make things so difficult in your post. But for the record, I own 37 HD DVD titles which are all single layer. Which means they are all less than 15GB in size, including all of the special feature crap and excess languages, previews, ect…
Yes, Blu Ray will be higher, because they have to be. They still use Mpeg2 and compared to VC2 or Mpeg4 for HD DVD.
As for DRM, I am in no way trying to say it is good or even endorsing it. I think it sucks. I am merely saying that it is how it can be utilized to refute your point of being an issue of practicality, not convenience.
Services like Fios and UVerse do not limit your bandwidth usage. Unfortunately these services are only available to a small percentage of people. Hence the reason why movie downloads have not and will not hit mainstream anytime soon.
And for the last time. If a Blu Ray or HD DVD movie is 15gb in Disc Form… you would not be downloading anywhere near this size file.
As for this being easy… I never claimed it was. Only said it is possible with current technology, which it is. Only problem is, the technology and knowledge to do it, isn’t easy or widespread.
And I fully agree with your point about OnDemand services. Movie Downloads are a competitor to OnDemand services and with giants like Comcast and Directv to name a few, offering 100’s of OnDemand programs, it’s even easier to see why no one is moving the download direction.
Also, I’m not saying it’s practical, but it is possible to do the following. If I have a 20GB file that has DRM to only allow playback on one system, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a backup copy of it, either on physcial media or another hard drive. What do I mean? You wouldn’t be able to play the archived file anywhere else, but you can at least backup the raw file to anything that you could fit it on. Just restore it later to the original file and your good to go.
As for being limited to one viewing location with downloads, that is wrong. Even with DRM.
For instance, my setup consists of a Windows Media Center PC which stores all of my downloaded movies and DVR recorded programs (also DRM to death by cablelabs) and using an Xbox 360 at each TV for a media extender.
I can stream any channel, downloaded movie, or recorded program to any TV in my house using this setup. Can you do that with your cable or satellite company’s box?
While I agree completely that my setup is rare, expensive and can be hi maintenance, that’s my choice. It’s not for your average consumer.
So for me only, sure why not, I would love more movie download options. If you don’t, that’s your choice too, but to say their are issues with it,... well it sounds like they are your issues. That’s fine, but don’t try to make them everyone elses. I’m not trying to say that everyone should do it.
As for Matt. Warner announced this over a month ago. I thought you might be interested to know that we also “landed on the moon.”
FYI, format war is good for consumers and is still going.