Blu-ray v HD DVD is still relevant - there's life in optical formats yet

Friday January 11th, 2008

It will be a long time before the death of physical media puts an end to the Blu-ray v HD DVD war, despite Bill Gates' comments at CES.

During the final Bill Gates keynote address at CES 2008 in Las Vegas, he talked about turning the Xbox 360 into a hard drive-based video recorder, IPTV and video on demand box. There's no doubt this is the direction that entertainment technology is heading, but there's plenty of doubt as to when we'll get there. Gates is not known for his fortune-telling skills.

It will be a long time before Blu-ray, HD DVD and even ordinary DVDs are dead and buried. Of course when I say a long time I mean at least five years, which is an eternity in technology. Realistically I'd say it's closer to ten years. Why? Because technology rarely moves as fast as people think it will. Shouldn't we all be telecommuting from our homes on the moon by now? Shouldn't the combustion engine have gasped its last breath? Shouldn't newspapers have gone the way of the dodo?

DVD player penetration has finally reached saturation point. At least in developed countries, it's safe to say that everyone who wants one has got one. No one is talking about ending the production of DVDs any time soon just because Blu-ray and HD DVD have come along. Even the old VHS format is still hanging in there, mostly for children's movies for people to play on the old VCR in the rumpus room to entertain the kids. Look at other technologies, such as audio formats, and you'll see a similar story.

Technologies such as IPTV have plenty of hurdles to overcome, such as digital rights management and broadband infrastructure. Once this is sorted out there will no doubt be another ridiculous format war (or several) to delay things even longer. Meanwhile the Blu-ray v HD DVD war will slowly sort itself out (my money is on Blu-ray) and the winner will gradually become entrenched in our lounge rooms the way standard DVD players are now.

I think it's fair to say that Blu-ray and/or HD DVD will probably be the last physical video formats, but I think it's crazy to say they'll shuffle off this mortal coil any time soon.

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3 comments

Comment from: David HAGUE [Member]

Adam - what did you mean by "Blu-ray and HD-DVD will be the last *physical* formats"? Are you referring to the media carrying the video? If so, what can replace it?

11/01/08 @ 12:59

Comment from: Adam TURNER [Member]

Good question. After these we'll see movies delivered electronically - perhaps streamed live, perhaps trickled to a set top box. I think we'll eventually see a subscription model where you don't own anything, so just pay a fixed price per month to access a library of movies (like Rhapsody does with music now in the US). That will help combat piracy as well.

11/01/08 @ 13:41

Comment from: Marc Edwards [Visitor]

I completely agree.

Blu-ray is definitely looking like the winner (good on Sony for finally winning a format war, assuming they do) and there's no doubt movie downloads are going to be the biggest thing in town at some point.

The bandwidth and licensing/DRM issues are substantial enough that I think your 5-10 year prediction will be spot on. I guess time will tell.

I also think the rental or subscription model for music will ultimately fail and DRM will disappear for music, but that might not be the case for movies and TV as the viewing/listening patterns are very different. If movie and TV rentals stay then we'll probably be left with DRM on them for a while, as there's not really any other way to do it.

Interesting times!

12/01/08 @ 12:07

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