HD For Indies

Burning Questions: More from the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD Front - Yahoo! News

This is the best update I've seen of late on the whole Blu Ray vs. HD DVD thing in a while, with some very significant new twists involving red laser HD discs, Microsoft based interactivity layers, etc. Below are some notes, and my own comments on the latest news.

Stuff covered:

-Warners' move to Blu Ray (in addition to HD DVD)

Red laser high def Blu Ray disks - it was proposed to support, within the Blu Ray format, for a RED laser HD disk. So in theory, you could author a red laser disc with H.264 (or VC-1 or MPEG-2, such as from your HDV camera or timeline) directly to a 9 GB dual layer DVD that would play back. This would be HUGE for homemade content to be watched on TVs, as this would let the enormous installed base of DVD burners (or at least the smaller installed base of dual layer burners) just get new encoding software to make HD discs of their home content, IF the format allowed for the reading of DVD+/-R disks. Hollywood might get EXTRA paranoid and NOT want homemade discs playable, which HP and other hardware vendors would fight, since that would mean that home content couldn't be readily authored to play back on Blu Ray players. But I think red laser BD-9 (and presumably BD-5 for lesser capacities) is GREAT idea and should be included, and would help bring Blu Ray into more homes if folks could use their HDV cameras to play that stuff back in the living room after editing on iMovie or whatever. This would be EXCELLENT for Apple, since a minor tweak of DVD Studio Pro, and eventually iDVD, would allow for authoring these discs from home.

This would allow for existing movies to fit on a BD-9 using existing production lines, and not require retooling for BD-25 discs. Most existing basic movies would fit on this format in HD, but would not have much room for extras.

HP proposed two changes to the spec for Blu Ray, one of which I would support and the other gives me cause for concern on Apple's behalf.

Item 1: Mandatory Managed Copy on Blu Ray. Mandatory Managed Copy is basically a REQUIREMENT, not an option, within the spec, to support managed, Digital Rights Managed copying of the movie to an approved, appropriate device. The device in question, as far as HP is concerned, is likely to be an HP branded Home Theater PC with the appropriate Windows Media PC software. So their allegiance is obvious - they want to be able to have folks by an HP Home Theater PC and load up a ton of movies that are available on the fly.

I'm in favor of this, there is nothing bad/evil about it from the consumer's point of view (the studios may not like it as a possible bootlegging hole) as it gives them (consumers) more choices for how/when they want to watch stuff. Since Apple, I am 99% sure, is going to be developing Viiv platform, hardware DRM'd home theater Macs, they'll be in favor of this too.

Item 2: HP also advocated using the Microsoft developed iHD interactivity layer, feeling that it would be good to have a common standard between desktops (running Windows Vista) and the hardware platforms. Well, that's great if you're HP or Microsoft, but, pardon my vernacular, sucks balls if you are Apple or a Unix/Linux platform. If Microsoft's iHD interactivity layer is all deeply enmeshed in the Windows Vista interactivity layer, what are the chances that Apple will be able to license, use, adapt, modify, etc. that code to play and develop HD discs? What are the odds that MS will play nice and make the APIs available in a timely, cost effective, and well documented fashion? Software development is littered with the corpses of companies that died while waiting for other companies to deliver well documented APIs for them to develop their competing stuff for. Look at browsers and media players (remember the "we can't unbundle it" line of defense from Microsoft during lawsuits?) for further details.

The only good thing about iHD is that it is XML based, which is a bit more open ended in theory. But in practice, Microsoft has a history of "embrace and extend," which means pretend to adopt but then put so many Microsoft specific hooks and bits in it that it is useless to competitors. They've done this repeatedly.

The analysts feel that Blu Ray is lined up to win, but it may be a Pyrrhic victory (see my Laserdisc 2.0 article for more details), even with Blu Ray's greater capacity and Sony's use of Blu Ray in the PS3 game console. other analysts predict an HD DVD win, due to it's more logical name ("WTF is a Blu Ray?" many consumers will ask - it's too techie a name) and first to market advantage (which may be waning at this point since launch has been delayed).

-mike