For the high definition DVD format “war”, the end draws nigh. For years, the two standards, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, have battled it out claiming to offer superior quality for the consumer, over the other, and superior anti-copy protection , again over the other.
We, the consumers, have been caught in the middle at the cost of our wallets two fold. For this statement I’ll explain. HD-DVD discs can only be played on a HD-DVD player, likewise for Blu-Ray discs as they can only be played on a Blu-Ray player. Another contributor to the problem is that the movie studios stood behind one particular format only. For example, Warner Brothers only released high definition movies on HD-DVD discs, not Blu-Ray. With some studios only releasing movies on either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, the consumer would be forced to spend up to a thousand dollars for each disc player in order to watch all of their favorite movies. Now you take all the money spent on high definition movies and their players and flush it all down the toilet, why? Well, when and if the high definition war ends and one format remains, consumers, who have movie and players of the defeated and discontinued format will end up have to by their movies yet again in order to watch them in the remaining format.
This rung true back in the last format war. Beta vs VHS. My family’s wallet was also a casualty in that “war”. Having to sell off the Beta player and cassettes at a fraction of what was paid of them, then having to spend the money all over again on the winning format, VHS.
The war, once predicted as going to last a decade or more, has seen another victory for the Blu-Ray format. Another movie studio, this time Warner Brothers, has left the HD-DVD format and joined up with Blu-Ray. The reason they gave matches the reason I have not invested in any of the two formats. Warner Brothers stated that “a two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption.”
My friends, family, and I have wisely chosen to stay out of this war and not invest a single dime on it. Faced with the fact that we lack the desire to pour money into high definition, twice, as well as our opinion that the standard DVD quality is just fine for us right now, the stance was and remains easy to make.