It’s official…
Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses
And in a first off the starting blocks kind-of celebratory move, J&R Announced it’s Blu-ray DVD Sale today.
Oh, and the American Gangster image? Remember this for the 2025 Edition of Trivial Pursuit, American Gangster was released on DVD and HD-DVD… today. Doh!
It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything about the whole Blu-ray vs. HDDVD fiasco, mostly because, well, it never really heated up beyond a slow burn. But recently, a couple of developments seem to be shifting the format war (slap fight) in the direction of Blu-ray.
First, Netflix announced last week that they would only be distributing high-def movies on Blu-ray:
Citing the decision by four of the six major movie studios to publish high-def DVD titles only in the Sony-developed Blu-ray format, Netflix said that as of now it will purchase only Blu-ray discs and will phase out by roughly year’s end the alternative high-def format, HD DVD, developed by Toshiba.
Second, electronics juggernaut Best Buy announced that they would:
…recommend that consumers choose Sony Corp’s Blu-ray high-definition video format.
Third, general-all-around-”we’re-not-really-evil” juggernaut Wal-Mart announced on Friday that they too would:
…phase-out at 4,000 U.S. Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores by June, saying it was responding to consumer preference.
Fourth, hey-me-too-me-too-and-we’re-not-evil-either juggernaut Microsoft is now rumored to be jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon. According to Smarthouse:
Rumours were circulating today that Microsoft is set to dump HD DVD and bring out a Blu ray Xbox 360 by as early as May 2008.
So all you HD-DVD/Betamax folks out there can probably expect fire-sale prices on HD-DVD players and titles at your local Wal-Mart… or just wait until Woot.com adds one to every Bandolier of Carrots.
So what does this mean to our clients… well, first off, not all that much on the business end (unless you own a whole lot of Toshiba Stock.) Look around your office. Do you see a Blu-ray player or a Blu-ray drive anywhere in your office? I didn’t think so. I know of a couple of cases where the regular plain-old DVD player in the office is less that a year old.
Now look around again, and point out the High-Def TV in the office. Enough said. Down the road, once the current DVD player and TV finally die, you won’t be able to replace them with anything but HDTV and Blu-ray (or whatever the newest technology is in 5 to 10 years.) Until then, we’ve got you covered, and in the future we will for your HD video needs as well.
Our advice is to just not worry about the whole format thing at work, you have enough on your plate. Just sit back, and only worry about the Blu-ray thing at home, it will take you mind off the looming end of analog broadcasting which is officially only 1-year away.
Just a couple of quick tidbits from around the web today:
From Seth Godin:
Human beings have short memories
German appliance maker Bosch introduces the Axxis™ washer.
From AdPulp:
Everybody’s getting into the video biz.
2 from From Digital Producer:
Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: The Blu-ray Perspective, Part 1
Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: The Blu-ray Perspective, Part 2
Finally, from the shameless self-promotion files:
We’re about to launch a new web site for the New Brunswick Cultural Center, (That’s New Brunswick, NJ for those who live in Maine, Georgia, Canada, England, and whereever else there’s a New Brunswick). NewBrunswickArts.org is about a week away from public launch, but for those 3 BrunswickMediaBlog readers out there: Here’s a Sneak Peek.
Jed Rosenzweig over at panandscan.com points out an article from Business Week that adds a whole new wrinkle in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray death match.
In his post High-Def DVD: Buyer Beware? Rosenzweig sums it up:
The problem is that in order to get high-def image quality out of an AACS disc on an HDTV set, the TV must come equipped with a special HDMI interface cable, but only one in 20 HD sets sold over the past three years has included this cable input. And the situation isn’t improving — it’s anticipated that only 15 percent of HDTV sets sold this year will be HDMI-ready.
As Seth Godin or Mark Hurst might say: This is Broken.
Add this all to the looming 2/17/09 deadline that the US Congress has set for the end of analog television broadcasting, and what do you get? Prepare for the fireworks folks.
So you buy a new HDTV (or converter box), plus a new HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray player, plus a whole slew of new HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs, and there’s still no guarantee that they will all work together.
At least it will keep the PR folks at all of these tech companies busy.
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.
There’s been alot of press coverage over the last month or so about the raging battle betwen the next generation of DVD technologies: Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. I say alot, but I suppose I should really say “more than usual”.