If you have even thought about this question, then at the very least you know that there has been an ongoing controversy about the standard of the next generation of Digital Video Data. If you haven’t thought about yet, here’s the low down.
Toshiba and Sony both had digital video technologies in the works back in the early 1990s. Toshiba won that battle with the DVD that we all know and love. Sony started working on the future of DVD technology and came up with the Blu
As the hold that Sony’s Blu-ray high def DVD format has on the market continues to get stronger in the face of opposition from the competing HD-DVD format, there are a number of things that Sony could do in order to secure a sure victory. One of them is lowering the cost of its Blu-ray disc players.
There’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that this move would make for a sure victory over HD-DVD. Most of this evidence comes in the form of sales statistics. Right now, despite the fact that Blu-ray players cost roughly twice as much as HD-DVD players, there are just as many Blu-ray disc players in American homes as there are HD-DVD players. When you add in the number of Sony’s Play Station 3 video game consoles- which also function as Blu-ray players- the number of Blu-ray players in American homes is significantly higher than the number of HD-DVD players out there. Combine those statistics with the fact that Blu-ray discs have outsold HD-DVD’s in the past couple of months by a margin of over two to one, and it becomes pretty obvious that consumers as a whole like the Blu-ray format more than the HD-DVD format.
There are several reasons why the Blu-ray format may be more popular among consumers than the HD-DVD format. The most obvious technical difference is that the Blu-ray format can encode a lot more data onto each disc than the HD-DVD format can. This translates into longer movies and more bonus features that can be included on Blu-ray discs. Since both High Def DVD formats are also optical discs just like DVD’s and CD’s, there are plenty of computer applications for the technology as well. More data storage capacity translates into being able to deliver more software on each Blu-ray disc than on an HD-DVD disc. Blu-ray is also a better choice for data archiving than HD-DVD. Specifically, the HD-DVD format can only store fifteen gigabytes of data per side of the disc while Blu-ray can store twenty five gigabytes of data per side of the same sized disc! With that kind of a difference, it could be argued that even if HD-DVD was the winner of the format war, it would end up being replaced by something like Blu-ray anyway. Using Blu-ray now, just skips that step.
With the overall popularity of Blu-ray, Sony could secure its win in the format war by lowering the prices of its players. Losses of profits from the players could more than be made up for in coming years by licensing and royalties from having a monopoly on the high def DVD market. Also, as the cost of producing Blu-ray players goes down, Sony will eventually be able to profit on sales of them as well. Unfortunately Sony has been unwilling to make that effort so far, but another company called Funai will force the price of Blu-ray players down by introducing their own Blu-ray players onto the market that will cost around five hundred dollars a piece- a figure much more in line with what HD-DVD players cost.
It’s interesting that a little known company could secure a victory in the format war for Sony by doing what Sony has so far refused to do for itself.
There have been several different solutions proposed to end the format war between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD high def DVD formats. One possible solution is a disc that has a Blu-ray version of a movie on one side and an HD DVD version of the same movie on the other side. If discs like these became universal then consumers wouldn’t have to decide between buying an HD DVD player or a Blu-ray player. Any disc could be used by either player.
Another solution that has been proposed is the possibility that is more of a solution by default as both formats become obsolete. This would be accomplished by the introduction of some new technology that makes DVD’s obsolete, and is obviously not an acceptable solution in the view of Sony or Toshiba. One example of a technology that could do this is mass storage of video on portable hard drives. This video would be stored in a highly compressed format on very large drives that could connect to existing home entertainment equipment through the use of USB technology. Consumers would purchase these drives for a reasonable price and then pay for the access codes to watch individual videos on the disk. In effect, this would be much like the kind of video on demand service that satellite TV providers offer right now, only with a lot more videos to choose from and the ability to access any videos that have been unlocked indefinitely.
Another DVD killing technology would be anything that would allow a comprehensive video on demand service. Basically, if it was possible to get virtually any video ever made from the comfort of one’s own home- both high def and conventional- there would cease to be any point in producing DVD’s. Fortunately for everyone who has an interest in DVD’s, such a service is a long way off, as much for legal copyright reasons as technical ones.
Then there’s the possibility of HDTV killing technologies. Three Dimensional TV is one potential example of this. But it should be mentioned that there is a prototype Blu-ray player that’s supposedly capable of upconverting high def video from Blu-ray discs so that it appears in three dimensions when viewed through goggles or on a 3D HDTV.
Perhaps the best technology that has been implemented so far that could end the format war is the dual format HDTV DVD player. Currently these devices are made by LG and Samsung, and their defining characteristic is that they can both play High Def DVD’s in both formats. In other words, anyone who buys one of these devices doesn’t have to be concerned about the high def DVD format war because they can play discs in either format. Of course, even if dual format high def DVD players became universal, HD DVD and Blu-ray would still be fighting for greater market share, but that wouldn’t really be of any concern to consumers. In fact, consumers would probably benefit from a format war like that because the two sides would hold each others’ prices down.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like dual format players will be a real solution because they cost so much. Right now it would be a better use of money to buy both an HD DVD player and a Blu-ray player separately. Hopefully though, this technology will come down in price to the point where it’s completely viable.
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