Will Hybrid Players End the Format War?

flyhalf writes "A new report says that hybrid players will force an early end to the HD DVD/Blu-ray format wars. Some of the projections seem optimistic: $200 hybrid players by 2009 and several manufacturers cranking them out. But reality will likely be different: 'standalone units of any format aren't selling terribly well. Recent research determined that 695,000 consumers owned either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, but most of those are tied to a console — 400,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold by the end of 2007 were PlayStation 3s and 150,000 of the 270,000 HD DVD players were Xbox 360 add-ons.' Most importantly, consumers aren't early adopters: 'DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States and there is little reason to believe that HD DVD and Blu-ray player adoption will outpace that of the DVD.'"

Sony = Duh?

Yeah, Sony has 400k+ blue-ray players available in the US in the form of PS3's at this point, all right; but first, not all of those have been sold...

And second, Sony totally blew it when they built the PS3 Blue-Ray capabilities; it can't play 720p, only 480p or 1080p, which means that a very large proportion of in-place US HDTV sets couldn't use anything but 480p, which is pretty much the same as a progressive scan standard DVD in terms of resolution. Oddly, the PS3 will do 720p for games. Just not for DVDs.

The reason that 720p is important is because for the LCD market, 1080p sets were rare until very recently. 720p was the top 'P' resolution available (it's actually the "middle" resolution in standard HDTV, 1080, 720, 480) though there are some uncommon ones and some variants, like 24 FPS stuff for 1:1 movie compatibility, and some TVs could scale 1080i down to 720p, or even display 1080i, just not 1080p.

Third, Sony's balking at allowing prawn into the format (like they did for betamax), which is (IMHO) likely to deal them another severe blow. It seems like they have developed an unmatchable expertise at shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:Sony = Duh?

Just wanted to point out, you can set the PS3 to output 1080i (which apparently the PS3 can do easily enough since there is no scaling required for this operation). For users who want to play Blu-Ray movies, they can set the output preference to 1080i while watching movies, and 720p for games -- which is what the friendly ArsTechnica folks had recommended for a while now.

Still waiting on a PS3 firmware update that lets users set separate preferences (in a rational way) for Blu-Ray playback and game play. I bought my Sharp Aquos LCD TV before the Aquos line started getting 1080p support; my TV is 720p native, though it does a good job with 1080i material. (The actual LCD panel supports 768 scanlines, so no matter whether I'm watching 720p or 1080i source material, there's some kind of scaling going on behind the scenes.)

cart before the horse

Why does everyone think people will rush out to buy players when there are only a handful of HD *movies* out on the market?

I know! I know!

Why does everyone think people will rush out to buy players when there are only a handful of HD *movies* out on the market?

Because they think we are all sheep who will do whatever we are told to do by our corporate masters?

Most people unaffected ....

The vast majority of people (in North America at least) are completely indifferent to this format war.

People with HDTV represent a fairly smallish chunk of the population. The most of the rest of us neither have, nor are we looking to buy, HDTV. It's an expensive migration path with little perceived benefit for many people and very little in actual programming to use it -- most of what I watch isn't available in HD, and I wouldn't watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" in any definition.

The ones who know how fraught with peril the technology is, are staying away -- that whole HDMI DRM debacle, not working with older sets, and whatnot conspire to make this stuff a bit of a joke at the moment. Most people I know own a plain old TV, in about the 20" range. And, most of them are very unlikely to care about HD unless it becomes exceedingly cheap and compelling to do so. For most people, a full HD set is just way too expensive to considedr.

I'm sure the format war will sort itsself out, and it will be a good thing for the small amount of people with the displays to use this stuff. But, in the mean time, I bet a lot of people really could care less about this particular format war.

Don't forget, DVD was a huge improvement over VHS, and it was compatible with existing displays. The next gen of DVD isn't.

Cheers

No!

But hybrid players will reduce the carbon emissions of traditional players.

In fact, I predict we will look back on the age of gasoline-powered DVD players and laugh.

Another way to read the numbers

From the article:
Recent research determined that 695,000 consumers owned either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, but most of those are tied to a console--400,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold by the end of 2007 were PlayStation 3s and 150,000 of the 270,000 HD DVD players were Xbox 360 add-ons.

25,000 people bought standalone BluRay players.
120,000 people bought standalone HD-DVD players.

I think the peeps have spoken and shown that if Sony wasn't bundling BluRay in with PS3s that almost nobody would be getting one.

Keep in mind too that all 150,000 people who bought add on HD-DVD players made an optional decision to buy that drive. 400,000 people who bought PS3s got a BluRay drive because you can't get a PS3 without one.

HD-DVD is winning the "format war" and it's only the PS3 that is so far making BluRay appear to even be in the race. I'd love to see disc sale comparisons because that will give a truer indication of who is in the lead than player numbers. It's a reasonable assumption that everyone who has an HD-DVD player is buying discs for it because the decision to buy that player was 100% optional and it's also a reasonable assumption that many people own the PS3 and don't have a single BluRay disc.

Disk sale comparison here:

http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/ [eproductwars.com]

From the looks of things it is extremely close, Blu Ray is coming on strong recently.

VHS - DVD was NOT due to visuals

'DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States and there is little reason to believe that HD DVD and Blu-ray player adoption will outpace that of the DVD.'"

In fact, there's every reason to believe that adoption will be significantly slower. Most people switched to DVD players because they had better features, not because they looked better. No tape jams, no rewinding, skipping ahead in a movie, special features, etc.

Plus, we've reached a place where the average person has DVD collections - they didn't so much for VHS tapes. Nobody ever bought season box sets of tapes en masse before DVDs, now they're suddenly saying "buy them again!"?

Is it just me?

Or is anyone having a hard time getting all excited about this debate? It's like they're not playing nice together solely to drag up media attention ... oh ... wait ... I see what they're doing :-)

Crap + Higher Resolution == Shinier Crap.

Only a small niche of humanity actually require fancy technology to be entertained. Remember that people used to see "live performances", and later on "black and white" programs on the over-the-air TV, etc...

The sooner they realize this the better. Maybe then they can focus more on script and acting lessons and less on CGI and camera resolution.

tom

doomed for failure

High definition video formats such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray are doomed for failure from the beginning, IMHO. Apart from DRM, HDCP, different formats, expensive players, expensive media, limited availability of titles and the ongoing war between the two formats: the main reason for its failure is that for most customers it doesn't deliver anything. Most of the customers out there have 27" or smaller non-HD sets - the different in quality between DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray is negligible. DVD was so successful because it provided better picture quality for everyone - no matter what is the display. DVD picture was consistently better than VHS for all customer's displays, had superior navigation capabilities and was more reliable/long-lasting than the tapes (which deteriorated after multiple use/got tangled in player etc. etc.). Also, DVD manufacturing was much more cost-effective and that savings were passed on to customers (albeit a bit late).

Still, this war is going to be long and hard-fought. Ultimatley, both camps will lose to online video content delivery. And, just like for audio, online content will be of lower quality than the one on optical disks of various kinds; and still it would be the winner. MP3, AAC, WMA are all lossy compression format which are lower in sound quality than CD (let alone DVD-Audio, SACD etc.) but they are winning more than anything because of the content delivery innovation and content mobility.

There will be one saving grace for HD-DVD and Blu-ray though and I think that will be computers and gamers use. This format will be more popular for people to back up their data on due to their larger size. It will also work well for releasing games for consoles with amazing amount of data to create more real-world-like experience.

Osho

Same play, different night

DVD players needed over a decade to supersede the VCR in the living rooms of the United States and there is little reason to believe that HD DVD and Blu-ray player adoption will outpace that of the DVD

Not only will HD/BR adoption not outpace DVD adoption, but it will lag tremendously behind it.

I'm not certain why this is hard for a lot of tech sites, as well as the companies that pushed these technologies, to figure out. The reason the DVD is widely accepted now is because it offered a multitude of benefits over VHS:
1) Larger storage capacity
2) Instant skipping
3) Smaller
4) More durable
5) Cheaper to produce
6) Higher quality
7) Longer lasting

The only thing that HD/BR have over DVD is an even larger storage capacity and higher quality, the latter of which most consumers can't even make use of right now. They keep all the problems that DVD had, such as possibility of scratching and moving parts. The only reason they were pushed out was to sell more HDTVs, as well as to give movie companies better DRM.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: HD/BR are just bumps in the road. The next turning point in terms of mass media storage will be flash memory.

Something the size of a mini-DVD (think Gamecube games), but likely squarish (like a floppy). It will have the internal flash memory inside a thin-but-durable plastic shell. Small pins slightly inset on one side are what transfers the data.

A storage system like this will be cheap, modular (only need a certain capacity? Save money and just buy that capacity), and durable. From there, it's just a matter of choosing a compression format for films to make standard. The lack of moving parts (aside from what is used to eject it/hold it in place) will make for less failures.

All that's needed for this to happen is for the companies to toss BR/HD to the wayside, come up with a good format standard across ALL studios, and then wait for the price of flash memory to drop more.

What does the consumer expect?

I think the problem for new technology is overcoming the hill of an established format. In the case of CDs, this was pretty simple. The quality improvement from tape to CD was dramatic and reached the level of what consumers expected. DVD did this too, being much higher quality than VHS and more portable (the latter is one reason LD never reached critical mass).

What it comes down to is: what does the consumer want and expect? Moving everyone from VHS to DVD took some time and that was making a change to a much higher quality and compact format (you cannot put 50 VHS tapes in a little wallet storage case). Nor can you jump to chapter marks on a VHS - more added functionality that people wanted. Also, the picture and sound quality was something you could enjoy without upgrading the other parts of your entertainment system. In the case of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the high quality has extra costs. The television and players required to get the full effect are much more expensive.

I wonder if the next format should not be based on discs, but more like flash drives with your movie. The great part about that would be plugging it into your "home entertainment hard drive" and installing the movie for future viewings. I love the idea of having all my films on a hard drive array, though it would be bad news for companies that make shelving. Of course, then some sort of offsite backup service will become important (if not mandatory).

Digital downloads will replace discs

I think digital downloads will replace physical ownership of discs. It will be a few years before high definition televisions become mainstream affordable. Many people are still using dial up, but how many of them can afford a high definition plasma screen. A few people with high incomes who live in an area without high speed access may be screwed by this, but I think they are far and few between. Portable players will be much better served by a digital download to their hard drive or (more likely) flash memory.

The high definition television downloads through the Itunes service and the Xbox 360 seem to be quite popular. I think we will soon see free downloads supported by ads within the content brought to the customer with torrents.

My guess is the following schedule:

first day: movie theatre release/network television debut

three months: direct download for payment

one year: torrent based delivery with advertisement for free (you download a television show with advertisements).

Walmart will continue to sell DVDs until the number of people who can't download content is small enough to make it unprofitable.

Sure the content industry wants the new disc standards for "unbreakable" copy protection, but I think they'll realize that downloads would make more sense.

No. They will not.....

Hybrid players will do the same thing for the format war that the Big Three video game platforms ave done for the video game industry: Change the game but not finish it.

There are now three formats out: Standard DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. If you bought a player that would play all three, why would you need to switch? Of course, in the future, DVD will definitely become obselet, since it is the only format that is not HD as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD already are. So, that leaves two high definition formats for 100% of the HD disk market share. If you start selling hybrid players that can play both of them, then what does it matter if you are buying Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Unless you are a videophile or always have to have the biggest and best of anything in your neighborhood, it doesn't matter what format you use. So, if companies no longer have to worry about compatibility issues and the criticality of those issues in determining a commercially viable product, no one is going to back out and let the other take over. If companies realize that they no longer have to worry about getting customers to buy their products as a matter of life and death, then we will be stuck with the same problem facing video game developers: Platform contracts, format conracts, and proprietary content issues that just irritate the customer because they would have to buy multiple expensive platforms so they can play all the games they enjoy, not just be limited to a specific few.

A hybrid player would further the multiple format problems that just flat out irritate users, since they would have to buy a hybrid player to be able to fully enjoy video media. If movie houses and studios got locked into contracts depending on what Sony will pay and what HD-DVD manufacturers will pay. If hybrid players come out, then good, I won't have to buy a different player for certain movies. BUT, then ALL players that you bought in the future would have to be dual format. The same thing can be seen in video media files: .avi, .wmv, .rm, .mpeg, .mpg, .xvid, .umd, .mp4... It's just another pain in the ass thing to complexify the problem. Sure media players can goup all of these into a single player, but the contractural and legal issue that arise, since these are proprietary formats, make updaes and compatibility a h uge headache and pain in the ass.

They should do it like TV: "We're gonna switch from analog to digital in 2010. Do what you need to change. If you want something else, buy it, but it's you're problem.". There needs to be standard format for media, and someone needs to put practicalty above profits for that to happen.

If you want to see what runaway formats can be like, just look at a complete list of Centerfire Rifle Calibers (Wikipedia has a short list). They all do the same thing, but everybody wants to make there mark on the industry.

Updated numbers.

Just to be a little more accurate there are over 2 million PS3's shipped now, and around 1.4 million sold. There are less than 200k HD-DVD players sold.

Now looking at those numbers it starts to look a little more bleak for HD-DVD as compared to Blu-Ray.

This could explain the large number of Blu-Ray movies out this year vs HD-DVD. It looks like there are around 2X as many movies coming out for Blu-Ray as HD-DVD. That also isn't very good for HD-DVD.

The price appears to be about the same now with a PS3 going for $500 and a HD-DVD player going for around $500, so the price advantage that HD-DVD had is gone.

Recent data on Amazon show that Blu-Ray movie purchases has now exceeded HD-DVD as of Nov of last year and it appears that total sales will be greater for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD in less than a month (if it isn't already), adds to the near death nail for HD-DVD.

Then you look at the content providers that are behind Blu-Ray and you start to see HD-DVD being killed off later this year.

Did anyone notice the HD-DVD presentation vs the Blu-Ray presentation at CES this year? Yet another bad sign for HD-DVD.

I will say that the pr0n industry picking HD-DVD will help it, but it appears that most pr0n is downloaded now, and the loyalty of that business isn't exactly as strong as say Disney.

So I guess Microsoft better get use to having Java run on even more stuff out there.