The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD war

January 6, 2008

Allow me to perform one of my common services, and explain a tech issue to the lay person who probably would (and should) care about this if only it wasn’t such a complicated mess. I get a lot of questions about this from people who (understandably) don’t follow any of this stuff.

I’ve been holding this post in for awhile, but I think we just hit an important milestone in the next-generation high-definition disc format war. Blu-Ray (henceforth “BRD”, or Blu-Ray Disc) and HD-DVD are two formats both vying to be the replacement for regular old DVDs. Why do we need to replace DVDs? It seems a lot of casual consumers don’t know this, but DVDs are not high definition. They’re really good looking standard-definition (SD), but they’re not HD; BRD and HD-DVD are HD, and once you see them you’ll immediately notice the difference.

Background

BRD was developed primarily by Sony, while Toshiba did HD-DVD. They are both physically the same size as CDs and DVDs, and they both are capable of displaying the same quality HD video. The difference is that BRDs have a higher capacity, but are more expensive to produce. Their players are more expensive to make as well, requiring a blue (imagine that) laser. HD-DVD has a lower initial storage capacity — meaning long movies or movies with lots of special features will need a second disc — but is supposedly going to be upgraded in the future with higher storage densities. HD-DVDs are much cheaper to make, since they can be stamped with the same equipment that makes regular DVDs with only minor changes, and HD-DVD players are much cheaper as well. In fact, Toshiba HD-DVD players were on sale for as low as $99 this past holiday season — the cheapest Blu-Ray players are still over $400 even on their best day; a year ago, all this stuff was about $1000 a pop.

So why is there a war and why should you care?

Since a big chunk of American homes now own an HDTV — almost a third of them now — demand for HD movies is increasing. Both formats are still alive and kicking because of big players on both sides; there’s a consortium of major electronics companies behind each format. Sony, Apple, Dell, Disney, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, and Sharp all support Blu-Ray, just to name a few, while Toshiba, Microsoft, the International DVD Forum, HP, and Intel are in the HD-DVD camp. As you may know, Sony made the PlayStation 3 a Blu-Ray device, and Microsoft released an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, so the war is proliferated by two popular gaming platforms and their fans.

Why not just have a player that plays both? Since they’re both the same size disc, it should just be a matter of putting the right lasers and chips in the same box. As it turns out, LG has recently released a player that does that…but it’s currently $1000. However, seeing that prices on the HD-DVD and BRD players dropped by hundreds and hundreds of dollars in 2007, I don’t think it’s out of the question for combo players to be available for $300 or $400 in another year. I personally think this would ultimately be the best for the consumer — because who wants to check for a compatibility logo when they’re buying their movies? Or when someone’s buying one as a gift for you? If these combo players get cheap, it’ll be a win for the consumer because whatever disc we stick in it will work.

The beginning of the end?

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, movie studiosThose combo players might not have much life in them though. Earlier this week, Warner (as in Warner Brothers Studios), which is one of the few major studios that has been releasing movies in both HD formats, announced that as of May 2008 they will exclusively release in Blu-Ray. Before this announcement, things were pretty much split down the middle as far as what big-studio movies were available in which format. But as you can see in the chart, HD-DVD’s future is not looking so good. Paramount and Universal are huge movie studios, to be sure, but what’s just happened is that Blu-Ray’s future has been ensured. It is not going away. Whether or not HD-DVD will continue to live alongside beyond the next year remains to be seen.

Bags of money

Several years ago, when most of the world’s HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs/players were still just prototypes in a lab somewhere, I read a white paper about both formats. At the time, I thought HD-DVD would be the prevailing format because it is so much cheaper to make than BRD, and that would spur adoption much more quickly among consumers. I mean, come on…if you’re given the choice of a $200 player or a $500 player, and the video they output both looks the same, what would you choose? What I forgot to consider was Sony’s tenacity when it comes to formats they created — they don’t give up, and they have bags of cash. Seriously, the reason most of the studios that have thrown in with Blu-Ray is that Sony paid them an enormous amount of money to join their “consortium.” Whether or not this is legal is a heinously complicated gray area, and of course all that information comes from “sources” because neither company would actually talk about such a payment. Anyone who’s followed this format war over the last couple years as definitely smelled Sony playing dirty.

So what should I buy?

Right now? Nothing. Blu-Ray players are still too expensive, and even if you bought one, you would be missing out on a ton of great movies that are only available in HD-DVD. You definitely don’t want to buy an HD-DVD player, because with Warner jumping over to Blu-Ray HD-DVD might be dead in another 18 months. On the other hand, if it’s not, and you want both formats, then you’ll have two boxes sitting under your TV. My recommendation is to wait it out until the end of this year. By then, we’ll have a better idea of whether or not HD-DVD is going to survive. If it looks like it won’t, then it will be a safe bet to just buy a Blu-Ray player (and it will be a lot cheaper by then too); if it looks like HD-DVD will live on, combo players should be much more palatable by the end of ’08. Despite really wanting HD movies on my new HDTV, I’m going to try and hold off until then.

9 comments ›
Posted in Tech & Science, TV, Movies, Media

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9 comments

  • The blu ray and hd dvd war - The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD war January 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am

    [...] Blu-Ray (henceforth “BRD”, or Blu-Ray Disc) and HD-DVD are two formats both vying to be … Read more… | Suggest Tags: DVD Michael Bay Brags About HD-DVD’s Inevitable Death Look for :  Michael [...]

  • Peelman January 6th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

    A) Sony is hemorrhaging money. Between the loss they have taken on the PS3, the money they’re forking over to studios for the exclusive blu-ray contracts, and the declining movie market as a whole, their cash reserves and the lack of stock growth in the last year isn’t a good sign. Granted they are HUGE company, and will probably never outright die, but they are putting a lot of money into a short term project (see B).

    B) The real opponent of BOTH formats is online downloads. I’ve been able to download Hi-Def movies to my 360 for ages. Comcast and Insight ahve offered on-demand services forever. Satellite has similar capabilities. Its only a matter of time before online, on-demand systems and ridiculously fast high speed internet make physical discs for casual users the exception rather than the norm. Some analysts predict this to start within 3-5 years. Considering the millions all of the HD disc backers are floating towards this fight, it makes one wonder who in the hell is doing *their* analysis.

    C) Blu-Ray having the greater market share of movies is irrelevant. Right now the vast majority (by leaps and bounds) of BRD players is PS3s. Stand alone players aren’t selling. HD players are. Granted, the HD-DVD add on for the Xbox 360 accounts for the majority of HD-DVD players (275,000 units the last numbers i looked at).

    D) Both formats offer almost identical quality specs. Blu-Ray offers a slightly more ridiculous DRM (digital rights management) that’s supposed to offer better content protection, but has already been broken by the folks at SlySoft (famous for breaking encryption touted to be bulletproof). A Blu-Ray movie or an HD-DVD movie will look and sound, for all intents and purposes, the same, pending the company didn’t fudge the transfer on one format or another on purpose.

    E) HD-DVD has Microsoft and Toshiba backing it, and neither is a slouch when it comes to funding and weight of opinion. And to clarify for the fanboys, Apple is on the board of BOTH formats. HD-DVD uses a coding API for its menus designed by Microsoft and from what I’ve read, its notoriously easy to program custom menus and things. Blu-Ray’s system (designed by Sony of course) is based on a parallel construct of Java (going off of memory since i’m too lazy to research, so bear with me) and we all know how great Java is *rolls eyes*.

    In my experience both formats are equal in terms of everything but releases and price. As far as that goes, I’ll Take HD-DVD for the time being. If Blu-Ray wins, blu-ray wins. Big whoop. My $170 Xbox HD-DVD player will still work, and play the handful of movies i have will still play (including Transformers (HD-DVD exclusive)). The picture is just as incredible as it would be in blu-ray, and best of all, I get to enjoy it now. And anybody who says anything about people buying the wrong format: HD-DVD boxes are red, blu-ray boxes are blue. And anybody wanting to gift movies to you out of the blue and doesnt know what type of player you have has no purpose giving you movies in the first damned place. Thats what gift cards are for.

  • Peelman January 6th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

    Addendum: BOTH players use Blue Lasers.

    Addendum to C: point being, the PS3′s sales are pathetic when compared to every other console on the market, the inclusion of a blu-ray player (and the fact that it was the cheapest player by several hundred dollars) didn’t help its cause any. The market for the movies themselves is one thing, but if nobody can afford the players to play them, nobody is going to buy them.

    Also to be noted, while almost 1/3 of the US has HDTVs now, most of them have no clue what the difference is, and probably can’t tell the difference. My parents can’t. My older siblings can’t. You put the two sources side by side on identical TV sets, maybe they see some clarity.

  • Jon January 8th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    I’m glad I bought my Toshiba HD-DVD player.

  • Vandebe January 21st, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    As owner of both a 360 and a PS3, I hope I can add to this entry and not get flamed to bad.

    I purchased the HD drive for the 360, and to put it simply, it sucked. It came with King Kong in HD for free, and I also rented the SD version to compare.
    I saw no apperciable difference.

    Now with my PS3, I can see HUGE difference. Even my redular DVD’s look better in my PS3, although they are almost always letterboxed. The reason we bought a PS3 was for the Blu-Ray, and boy am I glad we got it.

    Maybe it was just the HD drive that MS put out that was sub-par, but it was explained to me that the PS3 was the way to go for Blu-Ray, and I happen to agree.

    Ben

    As a caveat, I am definatley an XBox fan-boy, have been since they launched. My Xbox to PS3 game ratio is easly 9 to 1. I have had zero rings-o-death problems with either of my Xboxi, and I hope that continues. I just wish my 360 was as backwards compatiable as my PS3.

  • Richard.H January 27th, 2008 at 7:55 am

    Thanks for sharing this post. The info is useful for me. I’m just thinking which one get at the moment.

  • Hewlett February 19th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Toshiba just announced they will stop manufacturing HD DVD hardware. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/02/report-from-jap.html

    I’ll stick with “old school” DVD’s, players, and my non-HD TV for a while because, well, I’m cheap. Do you think solid state memory will be cheap enough to be more effective than optical drives in a few years anyway?

  • RogersMJ.com: The war is over...but don't jump in February 26th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    [...] competitor HD-DVD. It happened much more quickly than anyone anticipated (myself included, having written about it less than two months ago). The beginning of the last chapter in HD-DVD’s life was in the first week of January 2008, [...]

  • Michael June 2nd, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    Very good article. Thanks for the good information!.

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