HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray


The latest entertainment industry format war is well under way. Blu-Ray has the clear advantage as a superior technology but HD-DVD should have the edge in lower cost with its multi-format layer. We've seen format wars before and the superior technology doesn't always win. The bitter format war of antiquity between VHS and Beta left many enraged buyers with a VCR that couldn't play tapes from the local video store despite Beta being technologically superior.

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - Let the format wars begin!

The last contest was the new multi-channel audio formats; Sony's SACD and the rest of the recording industry going with DVD-Audio. Technologically both formats are remarkable and give us a clear leap from the CD, but the war that raged during the last four years went largely ignored by consumers. The advent of inexpensive universal players capable of playing both formats has ended the apparent war without a victor. But was there ever really a "war" between SACD and DVD-Audio at all?

The truth is that during the last four years there has been a format war bigger than SACD vs DVD-Audio with farther reaching implications than VHS vs Beta. The real format war is one the recording industry is loath to admit is really between transient data shared over the Internet and store bought media sold on discs.

Consumers are saying they prefer the freedom of downloadable data to disc based media. The dominance of MP3 players in the consumer electronics market swallows Universal DVD players' whole like goldfish at a frat party. Even if it means sometimes dubious quality of 128 bit MP3s, the average person doesn't care they're listening to an algorithm cropped rendition of the music they've downloaded. Explain to them the high resolution benefits of five channel music recorded with a bit rate that exceeds human perception and you'll get a shrug.

The "war" between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is shaping up to be yet another miscalculation by the entertainment industry. While they're telling us we need high def images on DVD, consumers are telling them we demand downloads of our favorite music, TV shows and movies. The recording and motion picture industries are busy fighting legal battles with peer file sharing like Bit Torrent when they should be finding creative ways to climb into bed with them (or at least beat them to the punch). They do themselves a disservice by simply dismissing file sharing as an act of piracy when there is a true consumer need being met. The challenge to the industry is to find a way to exploit it, not to sue kids using their parents DSL line to download episodes of Survivor Island. Do we really need another format war to further obfuscate the real war being waged over the Internet and in courts in America? If the industry doesn't "get it" soon the era of the plastic disc could be over before a winner of the latest format war is ever decided.