Intensity Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 The Rise and Fall of HD-DVD Movie studios have pulled support, now retail and rental will go pro-Blu. Is the format war finally decided? We trace the progression from 'stalemate' to conclusion. by Gerry Block US, February 15, 2008 - The next-generation DVD format war, or the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle as it has come to be known, has been taking place, privately and publically, for more than 5-years. The competing formats were the result of an industry that became divided in setting standards for the follow-up to the DVD format (more info here), aligning Sony's 13-company Blu-ray Disc Association against the smaller, Toshiba-led HD-DVD consortium. The benefits of being on the winning team appeared sizable, as the backers of the victorious format stand to make sizable income on the basis of licensing fees, a system established by the DVD Forum in the previous generation of optical media. The first consumer HD-DVD players hit the market on April 18, 2006, and first-generation Blu-ray players arrived shortly afterwards. Today, almost two years after the war began in the consumer space, Toshiba has all but conceded victory to Sony and Blu-ray. Though the vast majority of the battle, however, Blu-ray's transcendence was not a fore drawn conclusion. Indeed, just three months ago, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer described the format war as a "stalemate." How then, in so short a time, did HD-DVD die? We'll trace the chronology of the format's demise. In the months previous to Sir Stringer's stalemate comment, HD-DVD appeared to be riding a sizable wave of support. In August, Toshiba had managed to convince Paramount and DreamWorks to drop their Blu-ray support and go HD-DVD exclusive, at the cost to Toshiba of hundreds of millions of dollars in "promotional consideration." Shortly afterwards, the HD-DVD group unleashed its not so secret weapon, leveraging HD-DVD's lower hardware production costs to drop dedicated players below $200 at retail at a time when the cheapest Blu-ray players cost more than $400. Thanks to the price cuts, and even deeper markdowns in the Black Friday retail period, more than 90,000 HD-DVD players sold over a weekend. Toshiba's first HD-DVD player, the HD-A1. Though on a serious upswing, HD-DVD still faced serious challenges, particularly due to the fact that despite owning the majority of "dedicated" players installed in American homes, Sony's decision to employ Blu-ray as the PlayStation 3's optical format meant even the more than 750,000 HD-DVD players sold by November 2007 paled in comparison to the millions of PlayStation 3s in circulation. Coupled with strong Blu-ray movie sales (at times twice that of HD-DVD titles), actual victory for HD-DVD appeared unlikely, but consequently so too did a decisive end to the format battle. The hammer fell on HD-DVD on January 5, the day before CES 2008, when Warner Brothers announced that it planned to end its neutral stance and become a Blu-ray exclusive publisher in the coming summer. The news was unexpected (at least for the HD-DVD camp), and led Toshiba to entirely cancel its scheduled HD-DVD keynote presentation. It was also rumored that a 20-minute HD-DVD section in Bill Gate's CES keynote was also excised at the last moment. Scuttlebutt in the industry has suggested that Warner Brothers could have gone either way, and was in fact in talks with both Toshiba and Sony. Some sources have even suggested that WB had sided with HD-DVD, until the Blu-ray group offered hundreds of millions of dollars in extra payments at the 11th hour. Regardless, the news could not have struck at a worse time for HD-DVD, as with the world's technology press assembled for CES, Toshiba did not have an immediate strategy outlining how it would now compete against Blu-ray's sudden exclusive support of more than 70% of the major movie studios. In weeks shortly after CES, Toshiba launched a final offensive, dropping hardware prices on all HD-DVD players at retail and running a $2.7-million Super Bowl advertisement. Though lower pricing was always though to be HD-DVD's most competitive aspect in the format war, following the WB defection the general press all but declared the format war concluded in Blu-ray's favor, which resulted in the HD-DVD price cuts taking on the air of a potential fire-sale. The bad news for HD-DVD only snowballed through the past month as retailers took the opportunity to decisively conclude the format war generally thought to have been a highly negative influence on consumer adoption of either format. On January 29th, UK retailer Woolworths announced it would drop HD-DVD from its retail stores. The next day, National Geographic went Blu-ray exclusive. The final nails in the HD-DVD coffin were hammered in this week. On Feb 11th, Netflix announced it will phase HD-DVDs out of its rental collection. On the same day, Best Buy announced it will begin promoting Blu-ray as its recommend format. Most decisively however, today Wal-Mart announced that it will drop HD-DVD entirely from all Wal-Mart and Sam's Club outlets in June. Toshiba has publically maintained its faith in HD-DVD, recently telling The Hollywood Reporter that, "Based on its technological advancements, we continue to believe HD-DVD is the best format for consumers, give the value and consistent quality inherent in our player offerings." However, The Hollywood Reporter cites "reliable industry sources" who have suggested that Toshiba will pull the plug on HD-DVD in a matter of weeks. The company is thought to be losing significant money on HD-DVD hardware at the newly lowered prices, and with no ability to prevent further defection to Blu-ray, needs to make a tough choice as to when to cut its losses. The Xbox 360 HD-DVD add on sold roughly 200,000 units, but it wasn't enough. Should Toshiba indeed kill HD-DVD, or announce its backing of dual-format players, the next-generation DVD format war will have arrived at a sudden resolution that was not at all expected on January 4, the day before Warner Brothers' announcement. Most would agree that the format war certainly did not help consumer adoption of next-generation, high definition DVDs, and as such, a decisive and publicized victory for Blu-ray should help the medium grow and survive the sudden onslaught of digital distribution devices like the Vudu, Apple TV Take 2, and Xbox Live Marketplace. Looking back, it's interesting to note that despite the harsh criticism leveled at Sony for including Blu-ray in the PlayStation 3 and consequently suffering a disappointing console launch due to the $500 and $600 price points of the system, it was this move that served to give Blu-ray the installation base required to woo studios and retailers away from HD-DVD. Indeed, had Warner Brothers become HD-DVD exclusive, the move would likely have served only to extend the format war for another year or more, rather than signal a death knell for Blu-ray as it did in reality for HD-DVD, thanks to Blu-ray's consistently higher movie title sales over the course of the war. Though Blu-ray maintained a general advantage over HD-DVD throughout the format war thanks to the PS3, HD-DVD was not without its strengths. Though the actual medium offered less storage capacity than Blu-ray (15-GB vs. 25-GB single-layer), the discs could be pressed with only small modifications to existing DVD replication equipment, unlike Blu-ray discs. Dedicated hardware was also consistently cheaper to manufacture, and the format launched earlier than Blu-ray, which gave it a roughly 100,000-unit lead at the beginning of the war. In terms of user experience and value, HD-DVD also was a generally better option for much of its run. Blu-ray had something of an advantage in that all hardware could output 1080p, as opposed to low and mid-range HD-DVD players maxing out at 1080i. However, quality de-interlacing circuitry in modern HDTVs ameliorated this shortcoming in large part, and HD-DVD's advantage in interactive content support was actually much more significant. The Microsoft developed HDi interactive layer for HD-DVDs was ready early in the format's life, and allowed for a consistent development environment for interactive games, picture-in-picture extra features and commentaries, and web-enabled content. Blu-ray's BDJava, on the other hand, has remained both un-finalized and more difficult to use. The release of 300 on the formats threw this point into stark contrast, as the HD-DVD version offers a full range of next-generation extra features, and the Blu-ray none. The HD-DVD camp also avoided major hardware standard alterations. First generation models all included Ethernet inputs for firmware upgrades, and as such should still be able to play any HD-DVD. Blu-ray, on the other hand, has cycled through a number of non-final hardware profiles, the earliest of which will not be able to upgrade to the final profile, as the hardware lacks both Ethernet ports for firmware upgrades and internal storage necessary for web-enabled content. Consequently, early Blu-ray adopters will eventual be disenfranchised, meaning Blu-ray will have broken a cardinal rule of consumer electronics: don't obsolete early hardware. Looking forwards to a Blu-ray future, we can certainly advocate consumer adoption of the format, as the experience provided by a high-bitrate 1080p mastered movie in a quality home theater is certainly worthwhile. The PlayStation 3, however, is the only Blu-ray hardware we recommend purchasing, as in addition to its gaming abilities, it is the only currently available Blu-ray player that will be able to support every feature of the finalized Blu-ray hardware profile. Rest In Peace? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan_Dare Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 having rapidly scrolled through a very long article without reading it: yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bluey Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 *snore* oooold neeeews. i'm kidding i'm kidding - that's... very interesting. but i've been telling customers that for about a month now. i cant remember if i was making it up or if i'd seen some kind of .....pie chart. ..i'm confused. that was a LONG post though man. good for you! *thumbs up!* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stefkov Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 *Looks at Tech Board* but yeah. HD DVD is lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
somme Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 I don't want HD DVD or Blue-ray - I've just managed to gain back some of my VHS collection on normal DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 PS3 sales are bound to go up once the general public are aware that Blu-Ray will be the "next generation DVD". So what were the stats of Blu-Ray versus HD DVD? eg. whats storage and loading speeds etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daft Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 Now I just have to wait till the HD movie prices aren't extortionate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weeyellowbloke Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 Frankly high definition technology is utter balls in my opinion, so it doesn't really effect me either way. However, I did want HD-DVD to beat Blu-Ray, if only because Blu-Ray sounds crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ipaul Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 Hurrah I chose the winner! Well I didn't personally but my dad did, main reason he bought a PS3 really. Even so this pleases me somewhat, not only because Blu Ray has won but that it has brought an end to the stupid format war =P Now I just have to wait till the HD movie prices aren't extortionate. This as well. To be honest, I think upscaled DVDs are fairly close to HD and they are much better value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaq365 Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 PS3 sales are bound to go up once the general public are aware that Blu-Ray will be the "next generation DVD". Perhaps but you can bet there'll also be a blu-ray add-on/built-in drive for the Xbox360 sooner or later too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mokong Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 Sorry guys, thread in the tech board was made first, gonna have to redirect you over there http://www.n-europe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=678127#post678127 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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