JamieG Analysis

Recently Blockbuster in the US announced that they where going to support Blu-ray Disc.

This could be the tipping stone for the High Definition war.

About 3 months into the war, I was convinced that DB would win.

I thought I would go over the reasons for this here.

Firstly, the main PLUS for HD-DVD is that the duplication plants can be upgraded inexpensively. Current blank production etc areall ready well devleoped and proven. HD-DVD was expected to flood the market as it was first to market and theoretically could archive price levels agreeable with mass adoption compared to BD.

This, however, is not the case. Lets look at some of the reasons.

1. The main reason BD has been so successful in terms of numbers of movies released is simple. The fact that BD stores much more data and is harder to get burners then HD-DVD. This is in fact a COPY PROTECTION ISSUE. For example, DVD9 disks are mostly used for distribution of DVD’s as it initially made it harder to duplicate the DVD. As so, the fact that BD is more expensive to get burners and blanks, plus the fact that if you did decode it, you need a lot more disk and time to do anything with the data. All these factors make it that little bit harder to Pirate the disks. As a Distributor, the choose is easy.
2. DB stores more data then HD-DVD. This alone ensures the future of the format as the need for DATA STORAGE alone will catapult this format into the main stream. (When purchasing a PC, you always get the biggest Hard Drive you can afford..) As we take digital videos and pictures, We will need a consumer format to store them. BD is a far better technology for this. As such it was always going to survive. So why settle for HD-DVD if you know it will be obsolete pretty much only years into its inception.

Its not rocket science. All I can say is that I hope this War ends sooner then later. The war has done its work in forcing the competing sides to get product to market faster and at more competitive prices.