Lessons From the HD Format War 308
mlimber writes "The New York Times' Freakonomics blog asks a panel of experts, 'Is the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray really over? What can we learn from it?' The panel suggests, among other things, that Sony achieved a Pyrrhic victory because high-def DVDs will be outmoded before they reap enough profits to make up for what they (and Toshiba) paid out for both product development and bribes to win the support of content providers."
you crazy commie bastard (Score:3, Interesting)
And finding a reason to sell millions of people new DVD players.
Re:What I learned (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, it should be noted that the media companies who will be giving us content on these things are not going to participate in "open, collaborative standards" -- it's just not done.
There will be one, if not two, iterations of the "next next generation" of this technology before you get one that gets adopted as widespread as DVD was. The amount of people with next-gen displays is too small, and too many people are now leery about the next "new hotness" that they'll stay away even more now.
I'm not saying you don't make a good point. Just, they're not really looking out for your interests here, and they figure they can get everyone to buy a new generation of technology every time they think it's due. Once they come up with the next direction, they'll still change it to &^%& often.
Cheers
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Re:So does anyone buy Blu-Ray DVD players? (Score:4, Interesting)
As for downloads, they are currently a fantasy. Downloads could succeed if there were an outlet for downloaded movies similar to online MP3 stores. Download from a vast library covering a huge portion of recorded video, and keep the file to watch as many times as you'd like essentially forever... But no such thing exists on a large enough scale. Most content that is available is for limited time use and a restricted number of viewings, and the availability of titles is small. BluRay has nothing to fear from download competition until this is worked out, and there is no sign of progress.
It's not a battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (Score:-1, Interesting)
No, the question is whether people want Blu-Ray. With the exception of Playstation owners, who don't have the choice, the answer seems to be pretty universally no, because Blu-Ray is proprietary DRM suckage. By pulling some shenanigans to make it appear as if there was a battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and that Blu-Ray beat HD-DVD, Sony accomplished nothing. Now, the alternative to Blu-Ray is simply good old fashioned DVD.
So far, the incumbent DVD is beating Blu-Ray quite easily.
Re:What I learned (Score:3, Interesting)
Unite, comrades! (sorry, carried away...)
Re:So does anyone buy Blu-Ray DVD players? (Score:3, Interesting)
I rarely watch movies more than a couple times, but for music or some movies, I'm buying it on physical media. Why? Because like most of the populace, I don't have a server or the organizational skills to keep up with a media collection. Hard drives die, Windows needs to get reinstalled (again), or other catastrophic events tend to reduce my collection of MP3s and videos. If I have it in the closet on a disc, at least I can pop it in again whenever I want. Plus, I don't have to fight the DRM restrictions as fiercly.
In my own fantasy utopia (at the risk of getting Trolled), I would buy a license for the bit of media that I want and the distributor would allow me unlimited playing rights on any device. If I lost a copy of the media, I could download it again. After all, I own the license, right?
But no, media companies are obsessed with reselling the same content as many times as possible to the same people. How many special basement-THX-director's-cut-lost-hidden-import-bootleg versions of Blade Runner do I need?
Re:So does anyone buy Blu-Ray DVD players? (Score:4, Interesting)
Digital downloads? How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell me please exactly HOW digital downloads are going to happen. There is a reason a new disc was needed for HD, movies take up a LOT of space. Even recompressed a HD movie is several GB, how are people going to download this when there are plenty of ISP's that limit you to several GB per month? That's right, thanks to our ISP's we could MAYBE just download a SINGLE movie before being cutoff. What about the speed? What if I got only a work laptop? Meaning I can only leave it on for a couple of hours when I am home? Do you think your average ISP connection is fast enough for that? Where do I store it all?
Oh sure DESKTOP HD's are getting bigger all the time but what is a blue-ray or HD-DVD movie, 40-50 GB? That means a large HD can only hold 10 movies. Not much if you consider how many DVD's movie BUYERS got. Some people I know got large enough collection to stretch the capacity of pro-sumer level NAT storage, how the fuck are they going to find enough computer storage to store all this in HD?
Then offcourse you need to hook up this storage to the TV, how is this done?
Oh yes, there are solutions and workarounds a plenty, but I don't see any it being adopted anytime soon, just as MOVIE projectors BEFORE VHS were NOT popular.Oh right, some of you younger ones may not know this. No VHS did NOT mean the start of the movie rental business. It was available LONG before. You could always just rent a projector and some movies and real enthousiats had their own setup. But it was far to much of a hassle for the general public.
VHS made it easy NOT just to record your own shows, but to simply pop down the corner rental story, rent a movie and watch it.
This lead to a huge boom in the industry for a bit with countless stores opening.
It lost its luster a bit, partially because many more TV channels became available all catering to their own crowd. Simply watching whatever the tube feeds you after all is still easier.
But watch HD movies from a PC, that is a lot of hassle, NO, we on slashdot CANNOT judge this. People who compile their own kernel are naturally going to be a bit more inclined to be tech savy then those whose VCR has a blinking clock.
iTunes? iTunes is a joke, its sales are pathetic if you consider the market it operates in. Do the math, how many BILLIONS of consumers does it reach and how many SONGS (SONGS! Not full albums) has it sold? iTunes is the biggest online store, but compared to offline sales it just doesn't compare.
There have been several attempt at on-demand and download services and THEY ALL FAILED.
Don't get me wrong, it is OBVIOUSLY the future, but the future ain't here yet. At the moment we just don't have the tech to handle that amount of content without a shiny disc to put it on.
What people tend to forget is how slow things really change. DVD's didn't replace VHS for years. LP's sold for ages beside CD's. Digital download has been a dream for as long the internet came into existence and it just isn't ready yet. Just ask youtube why they don't serve all their vidoes in HD. Their servers, would choke and it would mean you would have to pick your movie now if you want to watch it over the weekend.
And then their is that shiny Blu-Ray disc in a store or rental place, you can pick it up, slot it in and watch it. No PC whining, no ISP complaining, no harddisk screaming for mercy. It just works.
I think downloads are going to have to wait a bit until those parts of the world who are willing to pay for their content can get their downloads as easy as a disc.
LaserDisc? (Score:4, Interesting)
They were available for 20 years with virtually every movie released on them that anyone would want to own. (Keep in mind they predated the VHS/Beta "war"). The only thing that took them out was a new technology two generations removed which offered significant savings to content producers.
Re:So does anyone buy Blu-Ray DVD players? (Score:3, Interesting)
Enough to make a profit? Don't know -- they did spend a lot of money on this war. But, sunk costs are sunk costs and can't be wished away; I'd rather be Sony than Toshiba in this situation.
Don't get me wrong; the technology moves fast. Someone "could" set up a download-based video store today -- though I'm not sure how well it would scale on the various network infrastructures they'd hit today.
But the technology isn't the only thing that has to move. The businesses have to move. Oh, they're making their plays, but they're not thinking big just yet; and they seem a long way from the insight that profit is not maximized by making the customer into the enemy.
Also, the public has to move. You may think that downloading a video is so easy anyone could do it; but even though you're surrounded by people like yourself, you are in the minority when it comes to the market of movie-watchers. A lot of people still have a VCR, with a clock that needs to be set manually, which they can't set. A lot of people don't have a PC with a broadband conection.
And of the people who "could" move to all-downloads-all-the-time, not everyone will; not right away, anyway. I'm not treating a subscription to a video stream as "equivalent" to a physical disc; I've watched how companies will leverage central storage and on-demand distribution into control and, eventually, extra money from your wallet. Or, the movie you want to see isn't popular to keep in live storage any more, so too bad for you. I'm also not putting up with extra "protections" that providers like to put in place to offset the perceived risk that I'll pirate the video (apparently if it's on a disc I'd probably be honest, but if it's pre-ripped that'll just push me over the edge...) -- or more likely just to again squeeze more money out of me for the same thing I was already getting.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
The conspiracy theory is that the studios have been doing that specifically to boost the perceived improvement of the HD releases of the sequels and figuring that the people who are DVD-only will never notice the difference because comparing different movies is subjective anyway.
Re:So does anyone buy Blu-Ray DVD players? (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, 720p can be done at about 2000kbps with x264, and easily lower than that. A 720p feature length could be done between 2gb and 3gb, and easily than that. Pirates are forging the way in this respect, as a quick google will show. [google.com] The rest of your conjecture is of even lower quality than your "20gb" number.
Re:What I learned (Score:5, Interesting)
HD pulled me back (Score:3, Interesting)
Its possible that the new is going to wear off after I feel like I've "got my money's worth" from my TV, but between those 3 channels listed above and Sports, I've definitely watched more TV as of late.