The Format War - Was it Good?
In all probability, Warner's announcement that they will now support only the Blu-Ray format will be the fatal blow that leads to the end of hostilities in the long war for control of the HD optical disk market. We now await the almost inevitable follow-ons from the remaining studios who support HD-DVD especially Universal and Paramount. Once they switch to Blu-Ray it will all be over. Actually, in August Paramount made a similar announcement tending the other way and citing the better sales and lower cost of HD-DVD players as the cause. Why was that not interpreted as the end of Blu-Ray then, while Warners move now is the end of HD-DVD? The answer is timing. Four months on everyone is battle weary and desparate for a resolution. This is the week of the Consumer Electronics Show when the tech press expect change and they seem to have what they want.
Warner were a crucial player because they had supported both formats, making the switch easier for them, but all the studios must have been keen for an end too. They have clearly held back from releasing extensive back catalogues of films until the matter is settled. We know, for example, that the entire James Bond series was carefully remastered in HD two years ago. Yet this lucrative collection is not available in either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
So was the format war a good or bad thing for consumers? Obviously it was not too good for anyone who invested in an obsolete HD-DVD player and a large collection of accompanying disks but they were early adopters and they knew the risk. Many of them, myself included, have both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players by now anyway. For those who waited it out there may have been a delay which they would have preferred to avoid, but I say "may" for a reason. What if the industry had agreed a single format when they had the chance? Then we would not have had the desperate race to get to market first and the competition that has brought prices down as rapidly as possible. If the matter is decided now then not much time has been lost.
But did market forces help choose the format with the best technical features and cost? Well technically there was never much to choose between them. Blu-Ray has a higher capacity than HD-DVD but both are adequate and can be enhanced with multilayer upgrades (which will of course require new players). HD-DVD players have been cheaper so far but with prices falling quickly the difference is probably not significant in the long term. HD-DVD made a forward march to arrive in the market first. In the past that has been a good tactic when fighting a format war, but the popular Xbox HD-DVD add-on was found lacking without HDMI. Sony took a bigger risk by providing a cheap Blu-Ray player in every PS3. By doing so they could have lost both the optical disk and their precious games console market. but the move paid off. PS3 owners have bought many Blu-Ray disks in the US causing them to outsell HD-DVD despite the early lead. This was the clincher that swayed Warner and won the decisive battle.
So in the end it was market tactics that won the day for Sony. Perhaps if they had avoided the war they could have produced a format that would have been cheaper and better, we dont really know. My gut feeling is that it made little difference in the end. And how long will this format last anyway? There are those who say that Blu-Ray will pass away before long because online downloads will make them obsolete. I dont buy that argument. Of course online content is the next big thing but hard disks still have a finite capacity. I think the download model will work better as a time limited service that will replace film rental only. I still want that James Bond collection sitting visibly on my shelf rather than lost on a hard drive and I think others will feel the same, at least for now...