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Blu-ray wins from HD-DVD
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That`s all, folks: it`s safe to stick your head above the technological parapet. The next-generation DVD format war is officially over.
With the news this week that Toshiba was raising the white flag of surrender for its preferred format, HD-DVD, the victory for rival disc Blu-ray was complete.
In truth, the rot set in some time ago, but the pace of HD-DVD`s demise accelerated dramatically and irreversibly when Warner Bros announced in January that it would only be releasing DVDs on Blu-ray.
Support for HD-DVD began to fall, with US firms such as Netflix, Wal Mart and Best Buy throwing their weight behind Blu-ray.
It`s a sweet victory for the Sony-backed Blu-ray format. Sony`s technically superior Betamax video format lost out to JVC-backed VHS when those formats went head to head in the 1980s.
The battle between HD-DVD - backed by Toshiba and Microsoft, and ultimately just two film studios, Paramount and Universal - and Blu-ray - championed by Sony, Dell, HP, Philips and most of Hollywood`s major movie makers - has been rumbling on for about two years. Sales of standalone Blu-ray and HD-DVD players have been relatively low, with only early adopters willing to hedge their bets and part with their cash on technology that could soon become obsolete.
Most ordinary consumers` only contact with the next-generation formats has been through games consoles - Sony`s PlayStation 3 has a built-in Blu-ray player, while users of Microsoft`s Xbox 360 have been able to buy an HD-DVD player for their console.
Sony`s decision to incorporate Blu-ray playback into the PS3 is thought to have been a decisive factor in the format emerging victorious. According to industry statistics, 3.2 million PlayStation 3 consoles have been sold in Europe, plus 34,000 standalone Blu-ray players. But only 55,000 HD-DVD players, including the HD-DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360, have been sold in Europe. And once several big film studios began to release their films solely in Blu-ray, HD-DVD was always going to be on the losing side.
Interestingly, despite Apple giving its backing to the Blu-ray format, it has yet to produce a single computer with a Blu-ray drive. Instead, Apple seems to be concentrating on movies delivered across the internet, through iTunes and the new Apple TV, rather than on physical discs.
So although Blu-ray has won this battle, it may not have won the war. As home internet speeds become faster and consumers get used to video on-demand services, the movie market could undergo a similar change to the music sector, with films downloaded rather than physically bought. |
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Published on 20-03-2008 |
