Blu-ray to sting HD-DVD
Peter Familari
February 28, 2007 12:00am
AMERICA'S porn kings may decide who wins the biggest format stoush
as the battle for the next-generation to replace DVDs heats
up.
And this is the biggest battle since the Betamax VCR took on its
rival VHS in the 1980s.
In January, anyone looking for a winner of the war between the two
next-generation discs designed to replace DVD would have picked
Blu-ray over the opposing HD-DVD format by a country mile.
The bet looked well-placed: the first two Blu-ray players,
Samsung's BD-P1000 and Panasonic's BD10, along with a handful of GB
BD movies, were in Australian stores in December.
HD-DVD movies were scarce and a player nowhere in sight.
Software support for Blu-ray is hefty. Every big Hollywood studio
except Universal backs Blu-ray, and only a handful of labels are
opting to press movies in both formats.
Blu-ray can also count on the hardware support of the world's
highest-profile consumer electronics companies including Sony,
Panasonic, Apple Computers, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Dell,
LG and Hitachi.
The HD-DVD camp includes Toshiba, Microsoft, GE, Kenwood, Canon,
Onkyo, Teac, NEC and Mitsubishi.
But the clincher for Blu-ray is Sony's Blu-ray-equipped PS3.
The high-resolution gaming console is due out on March 23 and will
be snapped up.
No wonder that last month it looked like a 3-0 to Blu-ray.
But just when it looked like being all over for HD-DVD two things
happened.
Both prove why a month is a long time in the ever-shifting and
often murky politics of consumer electronics.
The arrival of the HD-E1 -- Toshiba's first HD-DVD player -- in
Australia -- in the middle of last month was the first.
The second occurred a week earlier at the Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas, an event at which the adult industry holds a
concurrent exhibition.
The whisper coming from LA got louder as the show went on.
Word was the $72 billion-a-year worldwide porn industry would use
HD-DVD to maintain its 10 per cent share of an annual market of
standard DVDs worth an estimated $30.3 billion.
The official reason was HD-DVD's lower cost of production.
Unofficially, it is Sony's longstanding and praiseworthy policy of
disallowing its media to handle pornography.
The upshot is a Lazarus-like revival of HD-DVD.
But the smart money is still on Blu-ray. The format has the
software and hardware firepower to see off HD-DVD, notwithstanding
the latter's support from the adult industry.
In the long run, HD-DVD will survive only if the opposing camps
agree to build dual-format machines.
It's a rerun of the recordable-DVD debacle all over again, when
opposing groups publicly refused to build dual-format
recorders.
The confused public bought neither.
In the end everyone caved in and nearly all DVD recorders read the
-R and +R recorder formats.
Until the format issue is resolved, Toshiba is pressing on with
HD-DVD and has finally released its first Australian
high-definition player, the $1099 HD-E1.
The HD-E1 was meant to arrive before December, but after a
frustrating number of false starts Australia's first HD-DVD player
has finally arrived.
