Aug 17, 2005
Posted by Mike in Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD,Pigeons
0 Comments
Am I Blu (Ray)? (Part Deux)
A while back I wrote about the whole Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle raging (OK, maybe that’s a bit of a hyperbole) and how Hollywood is hoping that a new DVD technology will bolster sagging DVD sales (without even considering that the crap they churn out may be more to blame for sagging sales.)
Well, it seems that the Blu-Ray standard is starting to pull ahead of HD-DVD in the last 48 hours:
1) On Monday, EE Times Online reported Blu-ray adopts content protection. So Blu-Ray is first out of the gate with the one requirement that the Hollywood Studios care about. Sure HD-DVD has it’s own protection scheme developed by the AACS, but as Fox Group’s president of engineering Andrew Setos put it in an interview also published in Monday’s EE Times:
“In the final analysis, Blu-ray found its way to add two features that interested us greatly — an anti-commercial-piracy technology, developed primarily by Philips, and a renewability technology called Self Protecting Digital Content, developed by Cryptographic Research Inc.”
In other words, the Hollywood studios are interested in backing the format that offers the most protection against copying, technology be damned.
2) Yesterday, Universal Music Group announced that it is backing Blu-Ray. No reasons have been cited in anything I’ve seen, but I’m sure the anti-piracy announcement was the tipping point.
3) Today, the New York Times reports that Lions Gate Is Expected to Support Blu-ray Discs. The article states:
“Lions Gate, which controls about 4 percent of the DVD market, is the latest studio to declare its allegiance in the format contest. The Blu-ray technology is being developed by Sony, Panasonic and others, while the HD-DVD standard is backed by Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo.
Sony’s movie studio, as well as Disney and Fox, have also said they will produce Blu-ray DVD’s, which will include high-definition video, enhanced audio and stronger copyright protections. Lions Gate, Sony, Disney and Fox sell about 45 percent of the DVD’s in the United States.
MGM, which was sold to an investment group led by Sony, controls another 4 percent of the DVD market. Many industry analysts say MGM’s movies are likely to be produced in the Blu-ray format as well.
Paramount, a division of Viacom, and Warner Home Video and Universal Studios Home Video plan to release more than 80 titles in the HD-DVD format starting as early as the fourth quarter this year. Together, the companies control 45 percent of the market for the current generation of discs.”
So by my math, that’s 49% of the market committed to Blu-Ray, and 45% to HD-DVD. Place your bets now.
The other variable in this horse race is who will be first to market with their technology? Sony will have the upper hand there with next Spring’s launch of the Blu-Ray drive equipped PlayStation 3, and technology powerhouse (meant to be ironic) BenQ just announced that they will ship Blu-Ray drives in the first quarter of 2006.
The PS3 launch just may be the tipping point.
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