James Delahunty
11 Jul 2005 17:27
While both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps continue to promote their technology as the best option for a next generation standard, consumers and businessmen are becoming increasing worried. Whether you are a major movie studio or a businessman tied in some way to Hollywood, the prospect of a format war that would rival the "VHS vs. Betamax" war is undesirable to say the least. Both camps even agree that a unified standard is a much better option and seem to b still willing to keep up negotiations.
"We fully agree and concur that a single format is the best bet," said Mark Knox, adviser to the HD DVD promotion division at Toshiba. "We want to talk--let's talk. We leave everything on the table. We want to find the best single format." Similar belief comes also from the Blu-Ray camp. "Everybody realizes that it is in the best interest of us all not to come to market with two formats, to have just the one," said Victor Matsuda, a vice president at Sony's Blu-Ray Group. "That said, we're not there yet."
However so far no standard has been reached and many experts believe it is unlikely any agreement will ever be made. In fact, if you look at past news items on this issue, you will notice that both sides have already grown hugely and it already appears to be a battle for dominance. Blu-Ray is backed by a large group of consumer electronics and computer companies. It offers 50GB storage space, which is its main offering. Its biggest achievement yet is that the PS3 will use this format for games.
However, HD-DVD does also have its friends including many major Hollywood studios who have already announced plans to release high definition versions of their movies. Some even believe that Blu-Ray is not a contender to HD-DVD at all. The biggest difference the Blu-Ray camp emphasises is that Blu-ray will hold more data, whereas HD-DVD can hold 15GB, 30GB or 45GB. "The capacity difference between the two is not enough that anyone will notice," said Warner Bros. Chief Technology Officer Chris Cookson. "Interactivity and quality are the same. If we have a choice, what would be the logical reason to pick anything other than HD DVD? There doesn't seem to be any reason for Blu-Ray to exist."
For consumers, a war would be terrible. Firstly, everyone would have to decide which format to go with, which wouldn't be such an easy task as you risk seeing that format ultimately die out within a couple of years. Both sides have tried to defeat this issue by claiming they can make "hybrid disc" which could possibly store regular DVD data and HD data (sort of like a dual disc). But even that isn't much help to consumers. There is also a growing fear in Hollywood that the "DVD craze" of the past few years is dieing out.
DreamWorks Animations and Pixar Studios both issued earning warnings in the last few weeks, citing sales of the movies "Shrek 2" and "The Incredibles." Also Retailer Best Buy noted in its quarterly earnings statement last week that sales of DVDs, as well as CDs were gone far down, whereas video game sales ere gone far up. Analysts blame an "over-saturated" DVD market as well as Hollywood studios releasing too many movies too fast on DVD.
Hollywood executives are already in fear over these new problems, as they rely on the sales of DVDs to cover the falling income from box-office receipts. However it is not just big Hollywood studios and massive retailers that are worried, it's the smaller businesses that are becoming increasing nervous about the situation. For example, Steven Chack is in the rental business in San Francisco and he has already had trouble switching to DVD.
He has been changing the collection of VHS tapes to DVD as fast as he can afford to and has had to accept losing business to new services like Netflix. The change now to a next generation format would be hard enough to deal with for him but it looks like he may have to deal with the change to two formats. He still hopes that a unified standard can be reached. "They would be crazy if they didn't agree on a format," Chack said. "They should have learned their lesson from BetaMax."
No rental stores really want to have to offer movies on two different formats anytime soon. However, at the moment the focus is not on small businesses or retailers, it is simple on the pros and cons of both competing formats. Sooner or later one format (unified or not) will win this expensive battle, but for the sake of consumers at least, one standard format is better gotten sooner than later.
Source:
News.com