Everybody who hasn’t been living under a hippo the last few months is already aware that Blu-Ray won the current round of video format wars…mind you, the only people who really understand what Blu-ray even is are people like you and me. Tech junkies, videophiles, and industry analysts really seem to be the only ones who were even concerned with the outcome of this battle, as Joe Consumer doesn’t seem to really care one way or the other…with DVD still far and away the dominant video format, and new formats undoubtedly on the way, will Blu-Ray be little more than next generation laserdisc?

Let’s look at a few things first: though DVD sales eventually overtook VHS tapes, it took a full seven years to do so (1996-2003). In another seven years, I expect Blu-Ray will likely be a distant memory; the main reason I see this as the case is the upcoming proliferation of digital content delivery as well as alternate physical media developments. As more of the globe becomes high-bandwidth connected, more studios are allegedly looking at digital content distribution and wanting to get in on the ground floor…after all, if you eliminate the cost of producing physical media, all you’re left with is pure profit. Xbox LIVE and the Playstation Network will be offering movies through Netflix purportedly before year’s end, and this is just the start. Sure, there are plenty of people who say that digital downloads will never take the place of physical media, but these same people had great-great-great grandparents who were still investing in buggywhip stocks after Model-Ts were rolling out of Detroit, or buying up all the clearance-model telegraphs because ‘that darned telephone will never catch on.’

The future of entertainment IS digital content control and distribution…look at what’s happening already with portable media devices: movies and music on the road via mini hard drives or SD cards. It’s catching on faster than most people realize, but companies like Sony and Microsoft are already keenly aware of the transition. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are merely Trojan horses, using the lure of games to get you to hook one of these up to your TV…but what these boxes really represent is the ability of their respective manufacturers to deliver digital content to your living room, and this is how the future console wars will be fought. As technology moves forward, expect everything from movies to TV shows to albums to even the games themselves to be available for download on-demand; we’ve already gotten a taste of it with Xbox LIVE and the PSN, and it’s only going to grow exponentially moving forward.

Conversely, the transition to a non-physical media environment won’t happen overnight, so surely Blu-Ray could become the dominant format over the next few years, right? Unlikely, and here’s why: technology advances ever forward. The difference in quality between a VHS and DVD was quite obvious and pronounced, and it STILL took DVD seven years to become market leader without any new formats on the horizon. Blu-Ray cost is still a factor as well; the day I pay $35 for a Blu-Ray movie when the same is available on DVD for $20 is the same day a satellite’s dropped on my head from orbit, because I’ll have had to have taken leave of all my senses. Will the prices drop? Probably over time, but consider the fact that since the HD format war has prematurely ended, the impetus for Blu-Ray prices to come down has all but vanished. Sure, six times the pixel count of a standard DVD looks great on a flat-screen, but will the average consumer see value in this? My guess is that most will continue to buy standard DVDs, as the quality difference between DVD and Blu-Ray is far less dramatic than the difference between VHS and DVD and the price is more in line with what the average consumer will pay. this leaves Blu-Ray’s fate mostly in the hands of movie enthusiasts and home-theater afficianados, and this is hardly a wide enough base to establish mainstream success with the format.

What about games? The PS3 runs movies and games from Blu-Ray as well, shouldn’t this be a deciding factor? Quite frankly I don’t believe the PS3 will be as instrumental to Blu-Ray’s acceptance as the PS2 was for DVD; Sony’s still got quite a bit of work ahead of them to reclaim their position in the industry, and I don’t see them having the clear advantage that they had last console generation. It seems that the interest in the PS3 stems largely from it’s abilities as a Blu-Ray movie player, but traditionally it takes games to keep a platform afloat. Currrently the PS3 has the worst software attach ratio of the three current-gen consoles; if this persists, and third party developers discover that they’re not able to sell enough copies of their titles to recoup the investment placed in Cell/PS3 development, my guess is that the relatively anemic PS3 library won’t be seeing much in the way of a growth spurt any time soon.

Then there’s the whole issue of time marching on. Aside from digital downloads, the latest rumor being thrown around is the next physical media format we’ll be buying movies on will be SD cards. This makes all sorts of sense when you think about it; imagine being able to pop the card into a reader set up in your entertainment center for viewing on a 60-inch screen, or slipped into your pocket for watching on your portable media device? Sure, the price on the physical cards still needs to drop a bit (a 720p movie download over Xbox LIVE is typically around 3-4 gigs), but the economy of volume will see this coming sooner rather than later. the thing is that i don’t see SD cards catching on with the general public, but rather the exact same enthusiast demographic that currently buys Blu-Ray discs, which by all rights would erode Blu-Ray’s chances for establishing itself as THE go-to next-generation video format.

In conclusion, mind you that this is all just crystal-ball supposition and speculation, but from where I’m sitting I just don’t see Blu-Ray being the Great White Hope that Sony might want it to be. I feel that HD-DVD would still be around if Microsoft wanted it to be, but MS sees digital content downloads as the future of the medium…Bill Gates said as much well over a year ago. If MS is good at anything (other than selling half-finished operating systems and consoles that double as toaster-ovens), it’s seeing the big picture years, even decades down the road. If the PS3 had a better footing in the current console war I’d say that the picture for Blu-Ray might be quite a bit more clearly defined, but as I see the console market headed for more of an equitable three-way split this time out, my guess is that Blu-Ray won’t be able to dig its heels into the ever-changing mud of the current media market before something better comes along.

If you liked that, try...

1. Warner Bros backs Blu-Ray, HD format war continues to annoy
2. Paramount, Dreamworks back HD-DVD, drop Blu-Ray
3. Netflix Goes Exclusively Blu-ray
4. Toshiba Pulls Plug on HD DVD, Blu-Ray Crowned Winner
5. Is 2008 the PS3’s year?

2 Comments »

1. 
   Devin de Gruyl
   April 24, 2008 at 12:20 pm

   Interesting points, all. I’m a bit dubious about the potential for 100% digital delivery systems taking over physical media in the eyes of the Joe and Jane Endusers out there; I feel there will always be at least a psychological need for people to buy shrink-wrapped discs, cards, what have you. There’s a certain intangible something about owning a tangible object in your hands, one that you just don’t quite get with downloaded material; this is why even MP3 downloads haven’t taken over completely from CD sales.

   The only way I could see that situation happening, where media-free distribution becomes more popular, would be if it were easy/convenient to make a physical copy of your downloaded content for your personal archives - and I’m afraid we all know the chances of that happening, with the MPAA and RIAA running the show. They are, unfortunately, still hung up on the whole “There is no copying that is not piracy” kick they’ve been on since the first personal tape recorders hit the market, and as such the chances they will soften their stance to formally legalize the one-backup-for-personal-use clause are, as Gorilla Monsoon used to say in the old WWF, “highly unlikely.” Right up there with Vista going open source, or Richard Stallman rewriting the GNU website with Dreamweaver.

   Having seen some movies on Blu-Ray versus their DVD counterparts, I must admit - with proper upconversion features on your player and good A/V connections, a movie on DVD is almost indistinguishable from its Blu-Ray counterpart. At least HD-DVD had the unique “picture-in-picture” feature going for it, which could be added to the Blu-Ray specification, but probably won’t be. The additional storage space of a Blu-Ray disc (easily six times that of a DVD) might help it out in the longer run as an archival format - again, going back to the VHS-Beta format war, one of the major reasons VHS won out in the end was longer tapes - but prices of recorders and burners have to drop a lot more than they have now before that can happen.

   Without a difference in resolution at least as great as that of analog TV signals versus HD ones, the public probably won’t buy into the superiority of Blu-Ray, and certainly not as long as the price differential is as great as it is. Then again, it’s not unprecedented for studios and companies to force the issue. I don’t know if anyone reading this is old enough to remember the dying days of 8-track, but one of the sneaky ways the record labels tried to push everyone to CDs was to start producing really poor-quality 8-track cassettes (and I don’t just mean in terms of the music they contained, either). Worse, audio-equipment manufacturers started pumping out extremely poor-quality 8-track players, even when the format was still commercially viable, for little apparent reason except they wanted the format to die. The same thing could easily happen with DVD players and discs, if studios really want to drive people who otherwise wouldn’t touch a new format into moving to it. All it would take is a new DVD-player specification based on the old APEX units from earlier in the decade - you remember, the ones that “accidentally” scratched discs beyond the capability to be read? Something little like that. Again, you don’t believe me, look at 8-track… or vinyl, or cassette tape, or VHS. All formats whose demises were hastened by companies who overnight decided they weren’t going to use top-quality equipment anymore - sometimes even before demand for the product had fallen.

   It does sound like a conspiracy theory, I fear. But a determined industry motivated only by profit can and often does do some downright scary things if left to their own devices.

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2. 
   Shawn M.
   April 24, 2008 at 6:22 pm

   I think it’s all a matter of price, really. I mean, $30 for a Blu-Ray disc is far too much, especially when a regular DVD can be bought for a fraction of the price. And right now, there’s no motivation for me to switch. The jump in quality just isn’t that great — with DVD, I get a great digital image and 5.1 surround sound. Blu-Ray’s a bit crisper, but not enough for me to go and replace my entire DVD collection.

   I think that digital distribution will be the next step, especially with how many devices we have that connect to the ‘net. Right now, without even owning a hi-def disc player, I can still rent a large number of HD movies from XBox Live. And let’s not forget that Comcast (and other cable providers) lets you rent HD movies.

   [Reply]

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