Blu-ray's mountain to climb: is the format war really over?

gallery

Hollow victory?

Since Warner's announcement, discussion boards and forums have seemingly gone into meltdown, fuelled by passionate supporters of both formats. In fact, it's hard to find a home entertainment discussion board where the high definition debate hasn't taken hold, and usually with a vitriolic undertone to it (the same kind of 'fanboy' debates that have been plaguing such sites for more than a year now). The consensus, though, is that Blu-ray has won. But what's less clear is what exactly has it won?

The problem here is that a further set of challenges now face Blu-ray, that could prove to be a bigger challenge than seeing off HD DVD.

First, there's a collection of early adopters who picked HD DVD, who Sony will be keen to woo across to the Blu-ray format but may need to provide some kind of incentive to do so (discounts, trade-in offers, maybe even free hardware or media replacement). More critically, there's a huge installed base of DVD owners, a large slice of whom will need to be convinced that high definition formats are worth the bother at all.

For while there's been a dramatic boom in the sale of HD ready displays over the past couple of years, how many people have bought them specifically for higher definition films? Many choose them because they take up less room, many because they look stylish and many because there's simply no other choice in the modern day electrical superstore (when was the last time you saw a branded big-screen CRT set for sale?). The fact that such displays are now so cheap has proven to be another driver. But how many are looking for a disc format upgrade to match the new screen?

It's a problem, and one compounded on the shelves of retailers and e-tailers. To the average consumer in the street, can they tell much difference between standard and high definition content? Not easily, it seems, especially with a screen size of 32inch or less. Sure, there's some difference, but with HD films sitting next to their SD counterparts at anywhere up to four or five times the price, then it's hard to draw an argument that the visual and audio improvement warrants such a mark-up - it's not an overhaul of VHS to DVD magnitude here, especially with the capability of some upscaling technology. It doesn't help either when some HD releases also lack the features that come on the standard equivalent.

There is an even bigger threat than that hovering over Blu-ray now, and that's downloading. Despite the best efforts of Sony to employ an effective copy protection device, illegal rips of Blu-ray movies are rife, and are an ongoing threat to the premium-priced high definition format.

Many contend that we'll, in the years ahead, be primarily downloading our movies, although that alone raises some serious questions over the infrastructure of the internet and its ability to cope. Nonetheless, with the recent launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 video store bringing the legal downloading of 720p movies to a UK audience, it's likely that some will skip Blu-ray and HD DVD altogether when they opt for their high definition content.

In spite of Warner's support, and even with the potential future backing of Paramount and/or Universal, it's clear that Sony still has a tough job on its hands to sell the idea of high definition to a big enough market. Given the many, many millions of dollars that have been pumped into the Blu-ray project, Sony isn't likely to be content with Blu-ray occupying the same niche space that Laserdisc had to contend itself with for many years, and nor will its bank balance allow it to do so.

Email to a friend

Print this page