High-Definition DVD Market Facing Static

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-09-01T020620Z_01_N31389837_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-BLURAY.xml&src=rss' target='_blank'>http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-09-01T020620Z_01_N31389837_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-BLURAY.xml&src=rss</a><br /><br /></div><i>""Neither format is selling well or at the level I had expected. I had expected early adopters to step up and other retailers have had the same experience," said Bjorn Dybdahl, president of San Antonio, Texas-based specialty store Bjorn's. One format is expected to win, just as VHS ultimately triumphed over Betamax in the video standards war. Blu-ray was tapped by many experts prior to launch as the likely victor due to its heavier studio support. But since Samsung Corp. rolled out the first Blu-ray player, priced at $1,000, in late June, Blu-ray has faced complaints of sub-par picture quality on discs, talk of component shortages for players and other technical issues. "High expectations were set. At every meeting with Sony, every demonstration was spectacular," Dybdahl said. "Then along comes the first Blu-ray player from Samsung and that's when my expectations were hurt. When we put the disc in, all the sales people looked around and said it doesn't look much better than a standard DVD," he said."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/genImage.aspx.jpg" /> <br /><br />Well, this probably won't come as much of a surprise to our readers. Most of us here were well aware that the marketing hype the studios were spouting was just that: hype. When even the early-adopters that frequent this site say they're going to hold off for a while before buying either HD-DVD or Blu-ray, that should be your first clue. Now the retailers are all scratching their heads, saying "But Sony said it would sell like hotcakes." :roll: I don't think we're going to see any significant HD DVD sales increase until the holiday season, and even then, we'll have to (at the very least) see some price drops in Blu-ray players before anyone even thinks about buying one.

[ploeg]

One of the big reasons for this is mentioned in the article: the quality of the source material. If you're creating HD DVDs from the same source masters as you used for the regular DVDs, the HD DVD probably isn't going to be that much better than the regular DVD. You need to remaster the source, cleaning up the source if it's old enough, maybe some strategic editing to obscure physical blemishes or the use of a stunt double. Which takes time, money, and practice. Which is why we haven't yet seen the movies that people really want to see in high definition. If the high-definition versions of those movies are not heads-and-shoulders superior to the regular DVD versions of those movies, that in itself could kill the format.

So they're not going to see widespread adoption of these formats until they can release the movies that people want, and they're not going to release those movies until they're lock-sure that they can get them right.

And that's apart from figuring out which side to pick in the format war, and whether the increased quality is worth paying extra for.

[Felix Torres]

It also helps if you choose movies people *want* to see.
Preferably recent, high quality stuff, not just effects-laden turkeys that you're trying to rescue by squeezing a few extra bucks out of the early adopters. (Fifth Element? Fifth Element? They're still trying to wash away the red ink on that turkey? Who chooses the movies, anyway?)

Last Samurai was a good choice.

Terminator, not so much. (The original was a purposefully-fuzzy low-budget flick! T2 would've been a better choice.)

Serenity was a brilliant choice; a good, overlooked movie that benefits from the extra resolution.

Both camps need more Batman Begins, recent releases, and less "old-classics" that early adopters already own. Where is Lord of the Rings? Where is Harry Potter? Those don't need cleaning up; they're already HD-grade...

A really good idea at this point would be to jump straight to TV show distribution on these formats. After all, the content is *already* in HD, so no extra-cost mastering is needed and the case can be easily made for a modest premium (SD DVD at $30-40, HD versions at $50).

Of course, the camp that would benefit the most from this (BD) is also the one most determined *not* to use the technology that makes this a viable product (VC-1/MPEG4). :roll:

After all, VC1 can encode a FullHD, 2 Hr movie in 10-11GB, so a 45 minute show should easily fit in 4 Gb or so. That means two BD50 discs could hold an entire season of, say, one of the CSIs in its full HD glory. Conceivably, a dual-sided 50Gb-per-side disc could do the trick.

HD DVD, on the other hand, would need three single-sided discs to do job, so there is an economic case to be made there for BD. *If* they can actually deliver single-sided BD50s and double-sided 100Gb BDs. Which is, to date, pure speculation.

As immature as the hardware is for both camps, the content libraries are even more so. Which is why the bulk of early adopters have been no-shows. Its all about the content.

[ploeg]

And why do you think that the studios are releasing titles that consumers don't want, rather than the titles that consumers do want?

The reason is that the manufacturers had to rush their equipment out to market, but the studios can afford to take their time to get their releases right. In fact, it is essential for the success of the new formats to get movies such as Lord of the Rings right the first time, so that they are generally recognized as being heads-and-shoulders superior in every way to regular DVDs. Yes, you would think that the studios would be able to release Lord of the Rings straightaway. The studios don't have to release Lord of the Rings straightaway, so they're not going to. The new formats are too important to the studios' future profits for the studios to leave anything to chance.

So the titles that are out now are dry runs, and the consumers who buy these titles are guinea pigs.

[Felix Torres]

Could be.
Maybe the tech isn't ready.
Or maybe, just maybe, they think they're dealing with "Mikey". ;-)
Maybe they're going with c-list turkeys because they figure early adopters will buy *anything* to try out their new toy. After all, the good stuff will sell anyway, right?
So ship out the crap first and the good stuff later.
Maybe they're not treating consumers as guinea pigs, but merely as suckers.

Either way, the proper response is to avoid the content *and* the players like the plague. Which as the article pointed out, is exactly what consumers are doing.