DVD Wars II: Missing the Point Entirely

DVD movie have revolutionized the movie industry for both buyer and sellers, by providing a cheap format with new capabilities while inducing people to rebuy the same movies they have already bought. Ever since the CD caused a buying frenzy of music people already owned, Hollywood has been salivating over the idea of making us rebuy the same movies every 10 years. Well, the next cycle is here. Sony and Toshiba are now in a Betamax-versus-VHS style war over who will own the patents on the next set of DVDs which will provide HD content for players. While both are backwards-compatible with existing DVDs, Blu-Ray (Sony's choice) holds 50 GB of data and HD-DVD (Toshiba's choice) holds 30 GB of data and is far cheaper for manufacturers. The war is heating up, and both sides are pushing had with the new Playstation 3 supporting Blu-Ray and new laptops from Toshiba shipping with HD-DVD.



But this totally misses the point, and is more likley (at this point) to presage a disappointment for both sides. Despite the hopes and dreams of the FCC, HD-TV has not caught on with consumers and IS NOT LIKELY TO in the next two years. A few audio- and video-philes are on the bandwagon, but the majority of regular people still have their old analog TVs, and most of them are hooked up to $99 DVD players via an RF adapter that does not even get the max quality out of the existing format. What does either new format offer to these movie watchers - many of whom still have large VHS collections?



Personally, I am an early adopter. I had a DVD player when most of my friends were still trying to understand why you'd ever want to leave the "convenience" of a tape-based player. But I feel no need to explore Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. DVD was a revolutionary format because of its small size, the menu structure, the ability for multiple special features and commentaries, and its low cost. HD DVD, whichever format, is not revolutionary, it is evolutionary. And thus there is no driving need behind it. Look for these first-generation formats to both lose... at least until 3 years from now, when HD TVs really do become all the rage.