HD For Indies

Hollywood is being extremely protective of their content, to the potentially severe detriment of consumers - MOST of the HDTVs on the market will NOT play back high def DVDs in high def. And that's assuming that the movie you want to watch is published in the same format that your player plays - neither side is backing down from the format war, and Hollywood studios are (so far) aligning with one or the other, not both.

OK, so here's some stuff I've been mulling on when I'm in a pessimistic mood:

The HD Analog Shutout - no HD on your HDTV

It looks like the Hollywood studios are requiring use of an HDMI connector with HDCP (hardware device copy protection) for high definition video content on next generation formats, HD DVD and Blu Ray. Toshiba's HD DVD has already been shown with HDMI and stated definitively that the component analog outputs will work in standard definition ONLY, even though there is no TECHNICAL reason to prevent them from working in high definition. Sony, the primary backer of the competing Blu Ray format, also owns movie studios, so it's unlikely that they wouldn't require HDMI with HDCP as well. So this means that only newer sets with HDMI will be viable for watching high definition content. For all those who've already plunked down for HDTVs that lack this HDMI with HDCP, they are SOL. And frankly, think about it - who are the folks most likely to want to adopt high def DVDs? Probably those early adopter types who bought an HDTV to watch their DVDs a few years ago, prior to the introduction of this HDCP stuff.

So what does this mean? Imagine you spent $2000-$5000 on an HDTV a couple of years ago. You're into all this new tech, you love it. So HD DVD and Blu Ray discs actually ship, and you plunk down $500-$1000 for one of the first players (assuming you're OK buying into one of two competing standards) and you take it home and pop it in your player. Woops, your set lacks HDMI with HDCP, you only have HD component analog connections. Even though they work with all of your other high definition gear, the player will quietly downsample your HD signal to standard definition. You watch the movie, and frankly, it doesn't look any better than your regular DVDs that play on your kids' $50 player. Box it up and return it, you don't think it's worth it. You could be watching a regular DVD on a $50 player on a $300-$800 TV and it would look pretty much just as good.

It was a common supposition for a few years that buying a set that LACKED this and other digital shutouts (like hardware honoring the broadcast flag) would be protection against the onerous security measures coming. Looks like this is wrong, to the point that folks who have been early adopters will be punished.

Betamax vs VHS, Round Two

With HD DVD and Blu Ray, these two competing formats heading to market will both do essentially the same thing as far as consumers are concerned - play back high definition content, with enough room for a movie and extras, with web connection extras, and using VC-1, MPEG-2, or H.264. Most consumers won't even know or care about those last several things. Is it high def? Great. I'll buy it or not based on that.

BUT...with two competing formats, and Hollywood studios not committing to both formats, and first generation players in the $500 to $1000 price range, consumers are going to balk.

Everyone knows of, or has heard of, the Betamax vs VHS debate. No one wants to buy the losing format. With two competing formats, and the majority of movies available on only one format or the other, consumers will balk and not buy in. Who wants to buy a $500-$1000 player and be wrong? If players were $200, maybe $250 apiece, I, as a zealot, could see having one of each (and grumbling about it). But at $500 to $1000, I think the majority of people will decide to buy...neither.

HD DVD vs Blu Ray Equals PS2 vs XBox?

Perhaps we'll go through a period with both products on the market, but with some movies available on only one or the other. We've already got a situation like that - videogames. Some titles, especially those from game studios affiliated with the platform's parent company, only come out on one platform or the other. Want Super Extreme Fighter 9? It's only on Platform A, not Platform B. Maybe, in a year or two, they might port it to the competitor if anticipated sales would justify the effort but not threaten Platform A's market position.

Will consumers tolerate this? In videogames, it's been accepted because in the past it was too difficult to distribute games across all platforms due to the complexity of programming them. With movies, there's no such complication - it's relatively cake to author for either platform. But hopefully, since consumers have no experience like this with movies, they will balk, and balk hard at this. "Hey, I just bought War of the Worlds Three on high def! Dakota Fanning's KIDS are part alien! Let's watch it on your big TV!" gets followed by "Oh, dude, you've got the OTHER kind of player - the disc won't play here." will be considered too

Security Hassles

And even if it IS the right kind of player, other hassles can ensue - imagine you pop your disc into his player (or yours), and suddenly NONE of your movies will play on the player on that TV for some reason?

In the past security on consumer stuff has been mostly static - this is best exemplified by CDs and DVDs. Once their security (or lack thereof) was bypassed, the RIAA/MPAA couldn't do much to change their products to resist copying or "unacceptable" playback scenarios (unacceptable from the studios' perspectives). In DVDs, changes to region encoding is the only difference I've seen, but that's backfired. One of my three DVD players won't play a lot of DVDs because the discs claim they won't work on region free disks. The player is NOT region free, but the disks still won't play. Meanwhile, my Apex region free player plays them just fine. This is a nice example of what I think is likely with high def DVDs - the extra security will hamper a lot of legitimate uses, but there will still be mods, hacks, etc. out there that will be capable of circumventing the playback protection I'd bet.

While the next gen high def DVD formats will allow for dynamic and active copy protection such as updatable blacklists that ban certain devices from working with the high def content, somebody somewhere will work their way around it and get bootlegs out there. But for most folks, it's going to end up being a big pain - gotta buy a new player as well as a new TV, and then if your TV isn't big enough, you can't tell the difference. For legitimate users, however, this'll just make things ugly. There has already been talk of HDMI to component adaptors that would tell the security stuff (the HDCP) that it was a "secure" device, and pass on the HD analog component output. Now after having bought your $1000 player, and a multi-hundred dollar adaptor to make your HDTV work with the player, imagine you pop in a new disc that suddenly disables your high def player. "Buh-whaaaaaaaa?" you ask, in John Stewart like fashion - "What the hell?" There's retroactive, irreversible copy protection available. If the studios decide that your HDMI to component adaptor is a threat, in that somebody somewhere might use it to bootleg high def content, they can include UPDATED lists of "unacceptable" devices on their HD movies. When you pop it in your player, this list gets downloaded into your player's permanent memory, FOREVER preventing it from working with ANY disk with your little converter box. Then let the class action lawsuits begin. The fix? A partial refund, but not a working player setup I'd bet, and that'd be many years later. Not a pretty scenario.

An extra little evil tidbit - since both HD DVD and Blu Ray are expected to have online capabilities for extra goodies, that also means they'll have the opportunity to check to see if something's been modified in a way Hollywood doesn't like. Since updated blacklists can be accessed in many ways - shipped with the players, updated lists on movies themselves, and even uploaded when connecting via the Internet, it'll be tough to keep a modified system "clean." The really devious bit about this is that HOLLYWOOD, not the player manufacturer, holds the keys to your device's ability to play back content. Conceivably, if a player got shipped with a vulnerability, the studios could chose to issue disks that would disable ALL of those players. That's like Exxon reserving the right to disable your Honda if they don't like the way you drive. Or some crazy nonsense like that. Never before have content CREATORS been given so much control over content PLAYBACK technology.

But the TV isn't big enough to see the difference

OK, I'm winging it here based on casual observation, even amongst a VERY media savvy group of friends (I've worked in advertising, video, high tech and film over the course of my career), but most of my friends have TVs no bigger than 32 or 36 inches on average. And at typical living room viewing distances of 8 to 12 feet, frankly that isn't close enough, or on a big enough set, to really, REALLY get and appreciate the difference that HD offers.

A quick primer here - there's a limit to how small an object you can distinguish at a certain range. The further away, the bigger the thing has to be for you to discern what it is. Think about the "which letter is this" eye chart at the doctor. The further away he puts that chart, and/or the smaller the letters he puts up on there, the less you can perceive. Typical ideal viewer distance is about 3 times screen height away from the screen for a theater, or no more than 5 or 6 times the width away from the screen for homes. Skipping the math, most folks sit too far away from an HDTV to see all of it's detail.

A recent experience related to me made me believe that FILM originated material, transferred to HD, viewed on a typically sized biggish set (32 to 36 inches) viewed at normal living room distances (8 to 12 feet).

For more info on ideal screen size/distance, poke around in these links.

...and the TV's not that good anyway

We hear about how high the resolution is on HDTV all the time - there's 720p with 1280x720 pixels at 60 frames/sec, or 1080i with 1920x1080 with 60 fields/sec (which is arguably 1920x540 60 times a second, but whatever). While your HDTV might be able to TAKE IN that resolution, does it really display it? Or more precisely, ALL of it? Dig into the geeky specs on most HDTVs, and it can be pretty dissapointing. Cheaper panel based sets (LCD, LCOS projectors, LCD or plasma panels) often will have 1024x768 or less resolution - less than half of of 1920x1080 HDTV standard. Even the nicer, high end ones will only be under 1400x800. Recently, I read about some HDTVs that were honestly 1920x1080. They started at $10,000 and went up from there. UPDATE - Sony recently announced some new 50 and 60 inch rear projection sets with an honest honest 1080p resolution for $4000 to $5000 (Sony Expands SXRD Rear Projection HDTV Line With 50 and 60-Inch Grand WEGA Televisions
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Part of this is because HDTVs are still fairly new - as panel prices drop and technology advances, and HDTVs become more of a commodity rather than a luxury item, prices will fall and resolution and quality will increase. But I'd be quite surprised if a large truly 1920x1080 panel based display were under $1000 in 5 years.

All this is to say, by the time most folks look at their not-so-high-defintion TV, at the distances they probably sit in their living rooms, it's not as stunning a visual experience as it could have been.

So what's on the market now, and where's it going?

Just for fun, I did a completely non-scientific sampling - I went to Dell's site and took a look at their 30" LCD HDTV - reasonably large, around the size a lot of folks would get. Panel resolution was 1280x768 - reasonable for the market and TV size, but not close to the 1920x1080 signal resolution. HDMI was not mentioned anywhere, nor was HDCP - so HD DVD (and probably Blu Ray) wouldn't play back in high definition on this $1800 set. What about a bigger set, won't it have better resolution? Completely wrong thinking sometimes - their $3000 42" plasma set had a 1024x768 resolution (and yes it's 16:9). Most folks will go for size and not think resolution. So the bigger picture is actually showing less information (but, depending on your viewing distance, you might be able to perceive more - see? It's complicated). But at least the larger set had HDMI with HDCP. Seems some do some don't from Dell, and it's not all size related - a 19" LCD screen did, the 26" & 30" didn't.

And why am I chosing Dell as an example? The TV manufacturers are TERRIFIED of Dell. Once you go digital/HDTV, there's really not much difference between a computer monitor and an HDTV, especially if you're talking about LCD - it's the exact same technology, and that changes the game. An LCD HDTV is just an LCD computer monitor with some extra circuitry built in.

Dell is a master of low cost, good-enough-for-most-consumers manufacturing and marketing. As a brand name, most folks are familiar with it. If they can make the hop from being perceived as a good quality, low cost PC manufacturer to being perceived as the same thing for TVs (not a simple challenge, though), they'll be rocking the industry. Far more threatening, however, is the fact that Dell is the single largest consumer of LCD panels in the world ALREADY. I'd say this clearly says that more LCD monitors are being sold than LCD TVs world wide, and that makes a gut level of sense. If Dell gets serious about moving a lot of product, they are the Walmart of sales. As McDonalds is to beef, Dell is to LCD panels. They can dictate terms and get pricing like nobody else in the business, and be a huge, huge threat to the Sonys, Toshibas, Sharps, etc. of the world.

How quickly are prices coming down, and how quickly is Dell passing on those cost savings? I've heard that he 24" 1920x1200 Dell LCDs are likely to get into the $500 range by year's end.

The likely outcome for the formats

I see three possible outcomes that would make me happy:

1.) A common unified format is announced before commercial release of HD DVD and Blu Ray discs.

CHANCES: Unlikely at this point - the technologies are so similar in so many ways in their data format, but so strikingly different in their physical format, that a last minute compromise such as what happened with DVDs is unlikely.

2.) Both groups stick to their guns and enter the market. Upon release to market, one format clearly becomes the dominant one, and studios flock to that format and drop the other.

CHANCES: Unlikely that there will be a clear leader, unless there is some "hero" title that everyone flocks to and wants and that tips them in that direction. Or perhaps if it seems most of the good movies are on one format and there is a clear majority that tips in that direction, swaying the other studios to switch formats. Even if so, I think that some studios would stick to their guns (especially those owned by Sony publishing on Blu Ray) and the two disc standard would continue.

3.) After a period of generally stagnant sales the studios realize consumers are staying away because of the format war, the studios relent and start publishing on both formats.

CHANCES: Of these three possible happy endings, I think this is the most likely. And it would most likely start from an HD DVD aligned studio deciding to also publish on Blu Ray. Sony, as the owner of Blu Ray and movie studios, would be unlikely to decide to publish on the competing format, until others had switched over and Sony realized there was a compelling, overall financial incentive to do so. The good thing in this equation is that the studios are somewhat autonomous and would scream and yell about losing potential sales on their movies since they couldn't serve X% of the high def DVD market at the expense of the Sony hardware camp's hardware group wanting Sony movies only playable on Sony affiliated formats.

And of course, there are myriad possibilities that would make me unhappy - the most likely scenario is that there is a standoff, and most movies are available exclusively on one format or the other, with low consumer acceptance, and consumer doubt, frustration, and turnoff due to the incompatible formats, requirement for a new HDTV, and lack of movies on their player after spending thousands of dollars for a new TV and player. Both camps would grit their teeth and hope for some event to make their format more successful than the other, and nothing significant happens, such that most movies are on one format and not the other. HBO or Cinemax? PS3 or XBox360? HD DVD or Blu Ray? Consumer hosings all around, and this time for the least viable reasons.

I don't want to be in that situation, would you?

And if the market does go down this dual format path, and consumer acceptance is low, I could see HD movie prices staying high, at a premium, unless someone (likely Sony, in an effort to push the format) dropped prices on the movies (over the recently murdered corpses of Sony movie execs trying to protect their division's profits) in order to invigorate sales of players.

Thus, Laserdisc 2.0

Apparently, Hollywood would rather see a slow, languid rollout of high def DVD technology and loose millions or billions in possible upfront near term sales due to consumers staying away in droves rather than risk losing sales to bootlegging and casual copying over the long haul. For once, they are looking long term rather than short term. But their long term view may cause a stagnant market, limited to the movie zealots - think the folks that had laserdiscs in the early 90s. It'd be something you've heard of, have one or two buddies with money who've invested in the format, but you don't own and only go watch something at their house that they've bought once every month or two after the newness wears off.

And unless your zealot friend has dropped serious coin, and has all the right gear, and hooked it up correctly, and set up the room right, you're not going to see all of the HD goodness in it anyway. And if you don't see a serious advantage, are YOU going to plunk down for your own? Probably not until the price differential is slight. And the price differential is likely to remain high until the player manufacturers and studios get serious about pushing the formats, and get desperate to push it out there.

Laserdiscs 2.0.

Rare, pricey, hard to find, difficult to play back, only in the hands of the zealots.

Blah.

Much of this could be avoided, however:

1.) Merging the standards is basically inventing something brand new, and would take years. Personally, I'd vote to Blu Ray and bag HD DVD, but I don't see that happening - Toshiba et al won't lie down and quit, no way. HD DVD is attractive to Hollywood with it's potentially lower manufacturing costs, but Blu Ray will be attractive to computer users with it's higher storage capacity. DVD's capacity was one of it's stealth advantages that got it into the market - folks liked DVD capacity for data, and once they had a DVD-ROM, they could play back DVD movies on their computers and especially laptops.

2.) Ditch this HDMI w/HDCP requirement. Yes, there will be some casual copying and bootlegging. But there's going to be bootlegging anyway. Look at every "secure" standard that's ever been out there - somebody ALWAYS finds a way. So take bootlegging as a given, and then look at casual copying, which is still very difficult to do from an HD analog signal. If I wanted to do it, I'd have to bring no less than $5000 worth of gear to do it, and a LOT of technical know how. Not many folks are going to have that capability. Hollywood needs to run the math - either accept a small, ongoing level of casual copying (which has ALWAYS existed, people can still tape off of the radio, don't forget) and get much larger sales right from the get go, since consumers won't have to upgrade their HDTV as well. Asking folks to upgrade their TVs TWICE to take advantage of the latest and greatest is only going to be appealing to a statistically insignifcant number of consumers. A rounding error.

3.) And again, if we have to have two formats, ALL of the studios should publish on ALL formats. And if Sony holds the line and only publishes on Blu Ray, I'm fine with Blu Ray being the common denominator format.

So where does this leave us, since none of the above three are likely to occur? What are our options? Tune in Monday, I'll have lots to say on how Microsoft and Apple each have their own possible options...

-mike