In my ‘Introduction and Agenda’ opening article for this site, I hinted at having already picked my choice of format for high definition DVD. Well after reading mindless fan-boy drivel for Blu-Ray from major publications over the last few weeks, I’m ready to state my case. If hi-def DVD is to gain the needed saturation in the market place to succeed and elevate the video medium in general, HD-DVD is the one and only clear choice.

I know with those words many of you just lost interest in reading any further. I ask why? What has Sony ever done for you personally? Invented the Compact Disc? Do Blu-Ray fans have a ‘they did it once’ they’ll do it again’ mentality? Well, I hate to break it you but James T. Russell invented the Compact Disc Medium, not Sony. Do people long for their Betamax player’s? JVC won that battle and thankfully so. What the Blu-Ray fan-boys are trying to aid is the systematic homogenization of the home video landscape. Sony is basically strong-arming studios and manufactures into accepting their moderately technically superior format, as well as signing over the rights of millions of potential HD-DVD titles in the coming years.

I don’t want to see movies turn into the video game scenario. You have to own an X-Box if you want to play an X-Box game, same for PS2 and Gamecube. Do you really want that for DVDs as well? I don’t need Sony dictating to me that I can’t watch the James Bond catalog in hi-def unless I buy a Blu-ray player. I for one don’t want to see Sony hold our home entertainment hostage so they can have this bewildering desire to “own” a medium outright.

Other companies understand the value of licensing and working with other vendors to promote the format/medium in general, but not Sony. They want the whole enchilada. Listen, I don’t want to turn this into an anti-Sony diatribe. They are innovative in certain markets and have provided some unique products in the marketplace, (their Black Projection screen comes to mind) but there are real tangible reasons why Toshiba and NEC’s alternative makes more sense.

While Blu-Ray does indeed hold more data than current HD-DVD discs, it isn’t by such a large margin, that with the benefit of new compression schemes the difference couldn’t be minimized. HD-DVD’s can be manufactured on the same equipment that produces current standard definition discs today. This alone could speed the manufacturing process up during the initial production ramp up, as well as help offset the cost in general. Blu-ray on the other hand is an entirely different manufacturing process, adding unneeded additional R&D costs to the consumer’s bottom line cost for a hi-def DVD.

But if the cold hard facts of Blu-Rays ’supposed superiority’ aren’t enough reason to see that we need one format and one format only, you only need to look as far as SACD. Guess what, DVD player owners already had devices capable of playing high definition audio. Sony got the bright idea, or overwhelming greed, to introduce an audio format that wouldn’t play on many existing players. Why? Couldn’t Sony have worked with other manufacturers in propelling DVD-Audio as the one and only hi-def audio format? Of course they could have. They could have charged nice licensing fees to boot, but Sony, per usual, is looking at a bigger slice of the pie (cough mini-disc) instead of winning customer loyalty. Sony could’ve kept consumers happy by ensuring that they could buy DVD-Audio knowing they were investing in something that was around to stay, instead of wondering if the damn format would even last as long as the war for supremacy.

Don’t take my comments about Blu-ray to mean I don’t understand the formats benefits. To the contrary, I fully understand them. It’s my desire to start buying Hi-Def DVD’s immediately at a reasonable price, with out lining Sony’s already deep pockets that motivates my hope for HD-DVD’s supremacy. I know that a quick, clear-cut winner in this battle is unlikely, but hey one can hope and I do have hope. The “best” format doesn’t always win, just like Betamax, Mini-Disc, and even laserdisc for that matter. The format that shows a modicum of respect for the consumer does.

In the end both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are capable of producing excellent video reproduction and don’t let anyone tell you differently. What you should ask yourself is, do we need to support one manufacturers vision and the apparent lack of concern for what it will cost the consumer in the end? Or should we support a conglomerate of corporations who can bring a product to the market cheaper and in higher volumes, that we know has the ability to stick around for the long haul? My choice is HD-DVD.

R.Hollis

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 6th, 2004 at 6:09 pm and is filed under HD-DVD news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.