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The Blu-ray victory over HD DVD this week has left early adopters of the latter high-definition movie-disc format fuming, and mulling their next moves.
One such HD DVD stalwart, Andrew Buck, sent me this:
I admit it, I was an HD-DVD supporter. I am not one of those fanatical fanboys, but rather a consumer who loves high definition content.
My cable company doesn't give me enough HD channels. The networks don't give me enough HD content. The movie studios haven't released much decent HD content, and even supposed high-definition broadcasts such as the Super Bowl only achieve marginal HD quality; depending on which camera is being used, the content ranges from brilliant clarity to unfocused muted colors comparable to SD broadcast quality.
The news (of HD DVD's demise) especially hurts because, before the holidays, HD-DVD forums were all buzzing about a BIG exclusive announcement that would paralyze the opposing format. It appears that Warner switched in the 11th hour and shocked the HD-DVD camp.
Toshiba was so unprepared for that news, they closed up shop at CES 2008 and walked away from the show. What pathetic pansies. They lost this war as pathetically as they fought it.
It never ceases to amaze me how a multi-billion-dollar company could be so clueless about how to market a tech product. Shortly after launch, when you walked into a Best Buy store, you saw a Blu-ray display with a row of Blu-ray media and Blu-ray logos all over. The HD-DVD players were usually sitting on a shelf without being connected to a monitor and not showing any HD content.
Then engage the 17-year-old who just went through eight hours of Blu-ray training and had a chance at winning a Blu-ray player in the end-of-month drawing, and you would see that Toshiba never had a chance.
But, at the time, I thought I was making a brilliant decision in picking HD-DVD. Blu-ray players were $1,000 vs. $500 for HD-DVD. Blu-ray discs were harder to manufacture (or so we were told). Some of the first Blu-ray discs were poor transfers that did not compare favorably with HD-DVD titles. HD-DVD players were fully featured, meaning that they had all the intended features from day one.
Sony, on the other hand, dropped features in its hurry to market (thus born the profile 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 mess). And there was no demonstrable advantage to the larger Blu-ray disc capacity over HD-DVD. Also, at the time, there were some good movies that you could get in HD-DVD, but not Blu-ray.
(Truth be told, if I had had $1,500 to waste, I would have bought a Blu-ray player, too, just to avoid the content war.)
Mere hours after buying my first HD-DVD player, the honeymoon was over.
First impression: The player takes a minute to boot. Second impression: Every time I push a button on the remote to change the settings, the player freezes for 30 seconds or so.
Third impression: AWESOME PICTURE. Wow. Unbelievable, made me sort of forgot my first two impressions for a minute.
Then, I ran into what was to become a frequent event: the disc skipped or stalled. I tried cleaning the disc; didn't work. Tried resetting the player; didn't work. Tried moving past the skip; worked, but I missed seven minutes of the movie as a result.
Oh, wait, a firmware release. Fixed the skipping, hoorah. Disc two played with no issues; disc three, same thing. Disc four, whoops, back to square one with skipping/freezing. Rinse and repeat...over and over again.
I was under the impression that this was the same with Blu-ray. I now believe that Blu-ray has fewer problems. If nothing else, I'm happy Blu-ray won because of what life would have been like with HD-DVD. (But I don’t 100-percent trust what Blu-ray fanboys say about their technology, and won’t know for sure until I try out it for myself.)
Blu-ray won the first phase of the war, but anyone who thinks this is over is sadly mistaken. The fact is, HD-disc players are a niche market and not something that shows any signs of becoming popular anytime soon. Sony, the Blu-ray Disc Association and the movie studios now need to sell this technology to Average Joe.
Average Joe is not going to like having to “boot” his high-definition player, or wait 30 seconds to eject the disc, or put up with skipping discs, firmware upgrades, etc.
But without Average Joe getting into the game, we are unlikely to see HD content like “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings,” “(insert your favorite movies here),” etc. on disc anytime soon. The studios want to make a ton of money and will likely not release much of their desirable content until more consumers are potential buyers.
We can only hope that Sony and the Blu-ray group can find ways to move Blu-ray into the mainstream, but I have my doubts.
Now, I have a dilemma: Buy Blu-ray and risk my investment again? In the end, I got two years of HD content with my two HD-DVD players. The discs still work fine, and produce an amazing picture on my 105-inch 1080p projector. I hate losing, but I don’t want to do without HD content for the next two years.
I think I'll wait for a Blu-ray profile 2.0 player (announced at CES 2008) and go all-in…again.
Related: Interview with an HD DVD owner.
