HD For Indies

UPDATED 10:45 AM MONDAY - SEE BOTTOM OF ARTICLE FOR UPDATE

In the ongoing war between the two competing formats for next generation, high definition DVDs (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), HD-DVD today picked up a major coup - Paramount, Universal, Warner, and New Line announced that they will be using the HD-DVD format to publish high definition movies. To date, only Sony has stated that they will publish on Blu-Ray...and Sony is one of the inventors of the Blu-Ray format, intending to both build playback devices as well as publish movies in the format.

Mike's Comments: This is going down about as I've expected and been writing over the past 6 months or so. This is pretty much VHS vs Betamax all over again, with HD-DVD as the new VHS and Blu-Ray as the new Betamax. Blu-Ray is technically superior, in that it can hold more data per disk (about 25 vs about 15 GB per side per disc), but it is also more expensive to produce. HD-DVD discs will be cheaper to manufacture (and I've heard inklings that the players will be cheaper to build) and the same production line can be used to build regular DVDs as well as HD-DVDs. There was a demonstration earlier this year where they switched from regular DVDs to HD-DVDs in a matter of minutes in a production facility. Both formats will be able to use three different video compression technologies: MPEG-2 (same tech, higher res as what's used in current DVDs), VC-1 (based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9), and H.264 (MPEG-4, Advanced Video Codec, based in part on some QuickTime technology, and which Apple will vigorously support, including the codec in Mac OS X 10.4, due in mid-2005). When Blu-Ray was expected to support only MPEG-2, it made sense that the disks were bigger since MPEG-2 isn't as efficient as VC-1 or H.264 - the same video quality takes more megabytes in MPEG-2 as compared to VC-1 or H.264. But now that all three codecs are on both formats, and the manufacturing costs are lower on HD-DVD -- which would you expect a business to pick? Bingo - the cheaper solution. The only thing that could pull folks back to the Blu-Ray format would be if Blu-Ray had some kind of significant edge in copy protection - which I doubt since copy protection is done mostly in software/firmware these days, and any system could be implemented on either format, ASSUMING it wasn't Sony developed technology. ONLY if Sony builds/buys/acquires some significantly better tech will Blu-Ray have a strong shot at pulling other studios back into their camp. Sony has also publicly committed to having the Blu-Ray format be the disc format of choice for PlayStation 3 - which will certainly help their cause. X-Box 2 is expected to support HD-DVD. Sony has a history of sticking to it's guns all the way down - witness the Betamax experience, and witness their undying devotion to the ATRAC format for digital music? Huh? ATRAC? What's that? Exactly. Hellllloooooo, Sony, there's these things called MP3's out there? It was just THIS YEAR that they started to support MP3 on their portable players.

OK, enough of all that. Bottom line - I expect to buy an HD-DVD player in 2006 to watch high def movies on. The first players MIGHT be available at the end of 2005.

The players will probably be $1000 in the beginning, and drop to under $200-$250 within 2 years I bet. Regular DVD players will PLUMMET in pricing, much the way that regular standard definition TVs have. Have you priced a nice 30" TV lately? They are ridiculously cheap as compared to 3 years ago.

UPDATE MONDAY 10:45AM

...but opinions vary. Over on Engadget, they have an article titled HD-DVD not dead yet. Seems the sources on my prior article missed some details - Sony owns MGM, which also will publish on Blu-Ray. 20th Century Fox is also going to publish on Blu-Ray. So we have roughly a tie - 4 vs 3 studios for HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, and each format has one upcoming gaming platform apiece. So it's still up in the air.