HD-DVD camp says it isn't dead yet
Category: Industry, Posted: 01/07/2008 at 03:16AM EST by Frank Ling, Content Contributor
In last week's surprise announcement from Warner Bros regarding their decission to support only Blu-ray, the rival HD-DVD camp is busy with damage control and is stating that its format "has not lost" yet.
Toshiba Consumer Products of America president, Akiyo Ozaka, said HD-DVD isn't out of the race and commented, "We were very disappointed with Warner Brothers' announcement. Sales of HD DVD were very good last year, especially in October to December."
Jodi Sally, a Toshiba marketing executive, refused to say die and dismissed all the talk about HD-DVD already having lost the battle.
"It's difficult for me to believe when all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead. Clearly, the events of the last few days have led many of you to that conclusion. We have been declared dead before. The reality is we ended 2007 with a majority of the year-to-date market share."
While it looks gloomy for HD-DVD, history seems to indicate that nothing is a sure thing for Sony. The PS3, once considered the obvious winner for the console wars has had an uphill battle to grab market share. In the format wars for video tape format dominance in the 70's and 80s, Sony looked like the winner in their campaign to make Betamax the standard for the industry, only to lose to rival VHS.
Whether this upset scenario will repeat itself is definitely a long shot, to say the least, but the HD-DVD supporters are hoping for a repeat miracle for their suddenly declared underdog format.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, if it ever had plans in the works for releasing an HD-DVD onboard player for the Xbox 360, the news of another major movie studio going over to Blu-ray maybe causing the marketing brass to reevaluate their strategies.
[ via reuters]
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I'm still happy with my 72cm CRT TV and my Xbox 360 as my DVD player... especially with Divx support for obvious reasons. Sony showing their 4K resolution tech also seems redundant at this point but anyways.
I heard from a coworker that what ever format the porn industry supports is usually the format that wins. Weird, huh?
npt really, the porn industry makes more money than hollywood, and they support every medium possible. Blu ??Ray is the superior format, and the big studios will realise this with its finger print encryption method.
Blu ray will most likely win, seeing as it's included in the ps3 whereas it's a seperate thing with the 360.
Jesse! - The porn industry was a lot more important to VHS v. Beta than it is now, mostly because, as flarty said, they're rolling in money and supporting every medium in existence. Indeed, they've pioneered in many areas, including internet business. I don't know if they need Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as much as perhaps Blu-Ray and HD-DVD need them.
And comparisons to VHS and Beta are silly at this point. I doubt Beta ever had the sort of exclusive support that Blu-Ray now enjoys. And in the era of the internet, high-quality encryption is needed, which Blu-Ray has and HD-DVD does not.
The fact is that the format war is over, and has been for some time. The only reason HD-DVD has any studios left is because MS is paying them.
People say that blu-ray has better protection, yet I see new Bluray Rips every day...
Sersoft - Nothing is completely hack-proof. Nothing. However, the trick is to make it at least somewhat more difficult, which is why we see improvements on Blu-Ray. Compared to the joke that was DVD copy protection, Blu-Ray is leaps better.
@ Sersoft.corp
Actually, there are no BluRay encodes out of any Fox movies (28 Weeks Later, Simpsons Movie, Sunshine, etc) due to the implementation of BD+. Unlike AACS, which is a static security restriction, discs utilizing BD+ can be patched if it detects any vulnerabilities that are being exploited. So far, pirates have only been able to rip the uncompressed data (30-40 gigs) and play it back through programs like PowerDVD. Transcoding, however, is another issue entirely, but there is one workaround currently. People have been capturing from HDMI, but even that's possible to be fixed in the future. If this program continues to be effective (which it has), more studios are bound to implement the technology into their own releases. It probably won't kill off piracy, but it has the potential to slow it down significantly.