The Death Of HD-DVD May Not Save BluRay
February 18th, 2008Toshiba’s impending announcement that it is ending production of HD-DVD players, crowns BluRay as the next-generation DVD format champion. It may, however, be a pyrrhic victory and High Definition DVD’s may be an evolution in video player technology that simply gets leapfrogged.
Travelling in China some years ago, I noticed the prevalence of VCD, at a time when the developed world had largely migrated from VHS to DVD. DVD was only beginning to catch on in China at the time. I realised that there were a couple of reasons for this. A dearth of interesting Chinese broadcast TV meant that the recording capabilities of VHS were not required. But also, it seemed as if VHS had been too expensive in China whilst it was growing in popularity in the West. When the Chinese could afford these sorts of devices, VCD was the latest and greatest technology and was widely adopted.
Meanwhile in the developed world, VCD never really took off. With relatively little quality improvement over VHS, there was not a compelling reason to adopt the standard. Consumers were happy enough with VHS. Similarly LaserDisc was skipped until DVD came along.
Skipping a generation of technology seems to be quite common, with less developed markets being out of sync with the developing world’s cycle. So whilst we skipped from VCD and LaserDisc to replace our VHS systems with DVD players, the Chinese adopted DVD quite a few years later.
Similarly in audio technology, some technologies have been skipped, such as MiniDisc, in favour of MP3 players. The US adopted analogue cell phones and took a long while to adopt digital mobiles, whilst analogue never really got going in Europe and the developing economies. 3G does not seem to have captured the market’s imagination, as the iPhone’s use of EDGE’s “2.75G” technology demonstrates.
Whilst there are some features to the various technologies that help to explain this, it also has a lot to do with entrenched technology, and with the next generation not providing enough of a step change to unseat the incumbent. The market needs bigger changes in convenience and capabilities before moving forward en-masse.
High Definition for Television programming is not particularly compelling. Is there any need for HD when watching Lost, 24 or Prison Break? Few are going to purchase a BluRay player and spend extra for buying or renting TV shows in BluRay format.
This leaves Movie sales and rental. HD does offer a significant improvement in video quality over DVD. However some of that advantage is lost, with a large number of HD TV’s only being capable of 1080i or less, rather than the full 1080p. The mere fact that there is such a confusion of choice over display resolutions, input cabling, viewing angles, contrast, brightness and life span for many flat panel displays, makes for a very consumer unfriendly market place.
In contrast, Apple has patiently waited for average broadband speeds in the US to rise to the point where downloading 720p feature length movies is viable. With recent studies showing that BluRay provides only slightly better quality video than Apple’s movie rentals, BluRay’s major selling point is less compelling. With having to go to a physical store, or waiting for it to be sent through the post, BluRay compares poorly in terms of convenience.
Apple’s Video rental DRM restrictions may seem weak relative to Netflix keep-it-for-as-long-as-you-like approach. But, as has been suggested elsewhere, Apple’s service is effectively video-on-demand in all but name.
Apple’s aggressive price cut on the AppleTV, significantly reducing margins, is a shot across the bows of the BluRay consortium. BluRay backers will need to bring player & content prices down rapidly to ensure widespread adoption. Unfortunately for BluRay, the next year or two will see improved networking bandwidth and with it a likely increase in Apple’s video resolution, removing BluRay’s key selling point, altogether. BluRay’s backers, however, may not appreciate the threat and will, I suspect, rest on the laurels of their success over HD-DVD. BluRay players are still expensive, and are likely to remain so until the 2008 holiday season, at the very least.
BluRay has only a limited amount of time to establish itself as the replacement for DVD, before the inevitable migration to internet distribution for video. The long battle with HD-DVD may have forestalled any chance of High Def DVD becoming widely adopted. I predict that BluRay, despite a lot of press and winning its battle, will run out of time and will be leapfrogged by more convenient, consumer friendly, internet distribution.
