Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, Hurry! Choose a side!

It sure seems there is a whole lotta yellin for something that’s not going to mean anything for a few years. In the realm of DVD players, that little laser that read your disc is red. But with the advent of HDTV, now all the talk is about blue ray high-definition DVDs. The main players in this game are Blu-Ray, backed by Sony, and HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba. I know this sounds a bit familiar. It’s a format war reminiscent of Beta/VHS and DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW.

But let’s clear something up here. This is not a Betamax v. VHS situation. In the early 80’s you had no other choice. If you wanted to rent or record a movie, you had to pony up the dough and choose a videotape side. That’s not the case today. You can keep getting DVDs delivered in the mail from Netflix, back-up your computer on a 4.7 G DVD, and not have any idea that industry giants are kicking each other in the groin trying to get in front in this battle for “format dominance.”

Lest we forget, the landscape is littered with failed forms of media and even a few other format wars that no one really noticed. Who can forget the mid-90’s battle for digital tape format dominance (DAT v DCC)? Or MiniDiscs (Yeah, thanks again, Sony)? Or Super Audio CDs?

These had their place, and in some circumstances they were better than the mainstream media format, but that’s not good enough to be the default. What about DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW? In 2002, this drove people nuts, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard nary a complaint, I forgot there ever was an issue.

But I digress. Back to high-definition DVD. There is a bit of a connector conspiracy going with it. And here’s why. Standard DVD players are seeing very little market growth, because there’s not much reason to buy a new one unless your old one stops working. And it doesn’t help that you can buy new ones at Wal-Mart for $30. DVD technology has been one of the most quickly adopted technologies ever. In terms of household penetration, it is now right up there with Color TVs and telephones, around 90%. So a lot of this development into high definition DVDs is simply to give you a reason to upgrade and buy a new player.

But that’s me being a cynic. The industry line explaining the development is that with so many HD-Ready TVs being sold, the consumer demand for better looking, feature-packed DVDs is huge. This is of course because so many of us ran out and signed up for HDTV service through our cable or satellite service provider.

But, I disagree. DVDs look pretty fricking good on large screen TVs. HDTV is great because it actually makes broadcast television look better on large format TVs. Comparatively, regular TV broadcasts, even on cable or satellite, look a little like VHS playback when compared to HDTV. It really is quite a difference. But as great as HDTV is, the Consumer Electronics industry is having a horrible time explaining it. I’m looking for people to dig on HDTV before they start thinking about changing their movie collection format over to blue ray high definition whatever.

But here’s an interesting angle. On opposite sides of the battle/argument/whatever, you’ve got Sony (Blu-Ray) and Microsoft (HD-DVD): two corporate technology behemoths. Now think of it in the context of Playstation and Xbox. Ahaaa… Gaming and high-definition DVDs…. Sony is planning to incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Playstation 3, while Microsoft will offer an external HD-DVD hard drive for its Xbox 360. The odd thing is that the game discs themselves will stay with the previous red laser DVD technology we all know and love. So the blue laser will just sort of hang out until someone notices. Regardless, gaming consoles could lead to the first appearance of blue laser technology into many consumer households, since stand-alone high-definition DVD players/recorders for either format are expected to go for $1000 and up for a couple of years.

If you ask me, Sony’s name appears in this whole brouhaha quite a bit. They have a way of wanting to change the whole world in their favor. So, if anyone asks me: it’s all Sony’s fault, what with their dementia-induced world domination plans, and all.