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Moderator
Join Date: May 2006
Location: San Rafael, CA
Posts: 10,170
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Blu-ray vs. HD DVD and DVD
With the recent declaration that the BDA wants to snuff out DVD within three years, it has come to my attention that this war is really BD against both HD DVD and DVD. In such a case, I would think that the odds are definitely against them. Here's a take on this:
Quote:
Actually, the difference between the two formats' approach to SD was clear at the very beginning. Blu-ray always intended to replace and displace SD. That would shift royalties from DVD to Blu-ray. Blu-ray's hottest seller, the PS3, was never intended to do upconversion very well, because the name of the game was to make Blu-ray the new standard. HD DVD, on the other hand, was always intended by Toshiba and others to be an upgrade built upon the DVD standard, but preserving the "legacy" support for DVD through excellent upconversion. The HD in the HD DVD logo shows this intent quite evidently. The Blu-ray logo erases DVD from the picture altogether.
The HD DVD/DVD combo is just another example of the intent of HD DVD to ease the transition from DVD to HD DVD without burning that bridge altogether. In fact, people want both and like both for different reasons. The popularity of Denon, Oppo, and other upconverting DVD players -- including Toshiba's own HD DVD players -- demonstrates that the public is not interested in sending their DVD collection to the landfill anytime soon. Furthermore, Toshiba understands that it can profit from both DVD and HD DVD in fees and royalties. Toshiba has a huge stake in DVD. A Blu-ray only HD world would not serve the interests of very many companies, especially those with money in DVD. It would not even serve the interests of Blu-ray exclusive studios, who would see their profits dry up if they published only on Blu-ray. They would have to bite the bullet and sacrifice DVD profits for many years (not three) in order to get exclusive market share for Blu-ray.
But this PR "revelation" does reveal the ultimate motivations of Blu-ray, or at least of some in the Blu-ray group -- a Blu-ray monopoly of movie formats. Blu-ray is at war with both DVD and HD DVD. This may be a bit like those ill-advised "rulers" of the past who tried to invade Russia and found that the geography was just too big to conquer. IMHO, DVD is the "Russia" of disk formats. It is not like VHS, not even like LD. It is here to stay for a long time. Toshiba has decided to work with and continue to support -- in excellent fashion -- this giant mainstay of movie formats. Blu-ray has decided (or pehaps mostly Sony) to make war against the giant. This difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed the tactics, stated goals, and hardware of both camps.
Personally, I prefer the notion of evolution based upon DVD over absolute replacement of DVD. I think this idea is more consumer-friendly, pragmatic, and reality-based. It also makes me comfortable with my 500+ DVDs, some of which are classic, independent, foreign, documentary, and specialty disks which will never see a Blu-ray version. I can't stand to look at VHS on my 106" screen, but DVD with Toshiba upconversion from a good transfer (such as from Criterion and other first-rate producers -- is quite acceptable and even essential when it comes to certain films. Blu-ray eventual replacement of DVD -- through studio "blockades" of DVD production) would mean a content dominance that would make lots of films of interest to me vanish altogether. Even if this dominance could occur -- and it is not realistic to believe it ever will -- it would mean the dominance of popular blockbuster action films. I don't think it would be good for a handful of major studios to decide what everyone is going to like, although this would make economic sense for them.
The good news is that if Sony et alii should achieve this, it might evoke consumer disgust with the real motivations of commercialized digital media and drive folks back to the theaters to see real films again. Of course, it is Sony's intent to dominate that segment as well and to replace film projectors with DLP displays, beginning with the cineplexes they own. Sony's dream is that of a digital Blu-ray Sony dominated movie experience, from movie theater to home theater. Definitely, whatever that dream might cost the consumer aesthetically, it would surely benefit Sony's bottom line which -- by the way -- is what the "movie industry" has been about for quite some time -- to shape consumer tastes to fit market goals. Indeed, there are folks on this forum who have even forgotten how films are supposed to look. They don't like the "grain" of film and they relish in the often "cartoon-like" crispness of digital transfers.
It is all about shaping consumer preferences it is not about responding to consumer needs or desires. We will never get the "best technology" we will get the technology that yields the highest profit for certain players in the game. If quality had been king, the cassette audio standard and not the vinyl one would have declined. Vinyl sounds better than cassette, but it is also more expensive to make. Vinyl even sounds better than CD -- due to problems of sample rates and compression on CDs, but CDs are so damn cheap to produce -- a little piece of plastic inside a case of plastic with very little printing of cover art.
But I digress. In the end, we may get the movie standard that is forced upon us, and in that event we will learn to live with it (including its DRM, high prices, and other problems). This characterization may apply better to Blu-ray, since HD DVD doesn't seem to be aggressively forcing its standard over DVD. "Upconversion" is another term for "legacy support." The problem with those standards that do not have legacy support is that they have lots of trouble getting supported. The Blu-ray machines that don't play CDs haven't gone over very well, at least if this can be shown by the announced Sony player which will play CDs. People don't want legacy support abandoned in a period of three or even ten years. If Sony and/or Blu-ray really believes what is promised in the OP's link, then they are headed for nowhere guided by a monstrous miscalculation.
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