After the almost lethal blow that was Warner going Blu-ray exclusive, Toshiba and the HD DVD camp were left reeling. Their last gasp came in two parts: 1) an expensive TV ad during the Super Bowl and 2) further price reductions on all HD DVD players. Neither managed to excite the masses, however. The final blow came in the form of Best Buy, Netflix and Wal-Mart all announcing their exclusive support for Blu-ray. The jig was well and truly up, fat lady was spotted waddling towards the stage, and Microsoft was making noises that could be construed as faintly positive towards a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.

It will be very interesting to see what Paramount, Dreamworks and Universal do now. I’m fairly certain all have clauses in their contracts, freeing them from any and all obligations towards HD DVD if Toshiba throws in the towel. Paramount will probably dig up their already-authored Blu-ray masters and have Transformers BD in stores quick as a flash. Dreamworks will surely follow suit.

Universal, however… now that’s tricky. There’s been a lot of bad blood between Sony and Universal in the past. To be honest, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Universal announced they would take a break from Hi-Def altogether. That’s right: no HD DVDs, no Blu-rays. They could quite easily claim that releasing on Blu-ray is not commercially viable at the moment, thus thumbing their noses at Sony. They’d naturally anger a couple of million consumers at the same time, and that’s something they probably wish to avoid.

Universal will more than likely announce that they will start releasing Blu-ray titles, but it will take them a while to gear up production. 6-12 months, maybe. We’ll see.

I happened to be in Japan when Toshiba launched their first HD DVD player and naturally, being a purebred technowanker, I had to buy one. It’s kinda hard to believe that was ~22 months ago. HD DVD, we hardly knew ye.

Let’s do this the old-fashioned way, by the numbers.

1) I’m format neutral. I’m aware some readers have a difficult time believing and accepting this, but it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. I have seven Blu-ray players and seven HD DVD players. I have 291 HD DVD titles and 296 Blu-rays in my ‘library’. I’m a fanboy of High Definition audio and video; I’m a fanboy of both formats – and neither, in some cases.

2) If you find bias for either format in my rants, you’re not thinking straight. You’re probably interpreting the text through tinted lenses and find pretty much everything I wrote offensive and an insult to your chosen format. Do you send angry emails to Nielsen or Forrester Research for publishing reports that paint your chosen format in less than perfect light? (If you do, you’re an idiot.)

3) In my rants, I laid out the facts and the reasoning behind my statement of “If Blu-ray wins, the consumer loses”. Since this was obviously more than enough to get blood boiling, most missed my main point while climbing the barricades: I love both formats to bits and don’t want to see either format die out. I firmly believe there’s room for two competing HDM formats on this planet. (Why not three? Bring on HD VMD!) I also believe competition between the two camps is good for the consumer. What I don’t believe, however, is that killing one format is enough to get the masses off their arses and into stores to buy HD players and media. I’ve seen way too many bleak polls and analyst reports to believe that.

4) What I probably should have written: “If either format dies, the consumer loses”. Then continue with “…but if we’re forced to make a choice, we’re slightly better off with HD DVD.” No, stupid, I’m not comparing technical specs. Blu-ray as a whole has too much ‘excess baggage’ hidden behind the scenes. It’s too crucial for Sony as a company. It’s definitely less consumer friendly of the two formats with its draconian DRM and region coding. Also, what the hell is Pioneer doing, releasing a slow-as-molasses Profile 1.0 player 18 months after format launch with a price tag of 1600 Euros?! The mind boggles.

5) Format zealots: I hate you all. The worst thing, by far, caused by the format war is the rise of format zealots, foaming-in-the-mouth fanboys who abandon all reason and logic in defence of their chosen format. What’s in it for you, fanboys? Is it the bragging rights and infantile “HA HA, my format won, yours lost, nyah nyah!” shouting once the other format is killed off? Do you think you’ll get a nice big check in the mail and a pat on the head? 72 virgins…? Whatever the reason, fuck you very much indeed.

The news item is worth mentioning for a couple of additional reasons. First off, the person who wrote the news item knows very little about either format, it seems. He writes,

from a technical standpoint there’s not much difference between the file formats of HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Yeah, file formats indeed. We should probably be thankful he didn’t try to impress us by comparing the physical dimensions of players. “One’s a bit thicker!” Uh-huh, like you, I guess.

Second, and by far the more salient point, is the fact that the person in question injected his own personal opinion about one format dying off being a “blessing for the consumer”. How, exactly? According to him, it’s a blessing because the consumer has no need to ponder on which format’s player to purchase.

Oh boy. Let’s break this down a bit, shall we? You are interested in High Definition movies. You’ve got a nice 42-inch HDTV and a surround sound system at home and you’re ready to take the plunge. But wait! Some of the movies you want to buy are released on HD DVD only, and other favourites are out only on Blu-ray. What to do, WHAT TO DO?!

It’s quite simple: you buy both.

By now you’re probably screaming about not being able to afford two players, or that buying movies in two formats is silly, or something equally retarded. Shut up, you can afford two players. The format war was taking care of player prices. You could have purchased the cheaper player now and the more expensive one later once its price dropped. And let’s be honest here, what the hell are you doing, thinking about HD if you can’t afford the hobby? Get real, grow a pair and stop whining.

Multi-format, then.

This is not the first time you need to buy more than one piece of equipment to have access to all the content you wish to enjoy. If you’re into videogames and own more than one games console, I can and will call you a hypocrite. You wanted to play a game which was exclusive to PlayStation 2 so you bought a PS2, right? Then you bought an Xbox for some of its exclusive titles. Now you’ve got a PS3 and an Xbox 360, while your Nintendo Famicom, Gamecube and a couple of Sega’s old consoles are gathering dust in the attic.

So please stop whinging about buying content in two formats. You’ve bought plenty of content in various formats in the past. C-cassettes, CDs, mp3s, you’ve bought movies in VHS and DVD formats – and if you pay a TV license fee, that’s just one more content format you’re paying to enjoy.

Still mumbling about needing two players? Well, I suggest you write a stern note to CE manufacturers and demand a box which acts as a set-top box for digital TV broadcasts, while also playing DVDs, Blu-rays and HD DVDs – and fits nicely into your pocket so you can view movies on-the-go. Don’t forget, it has to be a phone and a digital camera as well. Convergence is a great idea, but let’s face it, we will always have a variety of boxes lying around the house for various tasks. One box more is not going to kill you. Unless it bursts into flame at night and burns the house down with you inside.

But seriously, LG and Samsung have new comboplayers coming out this year. Samsung announced a new UP5500 at CES for $599. That’s about half of what LG’s first comboplayer cost only some months ago. We’ll have to see what effect Warner’s announcement has on the future of comboplayers, however.

Lesser of two evils.

In part 1 of this rant, I wrote about how Sony and its partners have invested billions on Blu-ray, and how they will eventually get their money back from the consumers. None of these companies is running a charity, after all. And you know what? Toshiba is not a charity either. If HD DVD won the war, Toshiba would certainly do everything in their power to make money as well. I just happen to believe that we, as consumers, would have been better off under Toshiba’s regime.

Here’s why:
1) Toshiba does not control HD DVD replication.
2) Toshiba does not own any Hollywood studios, i.e. it has no reason to screw competing studios over.
3) Toshiba has never introduced rootkits in its software. Big corporations are evil, but Toshiba is lesser of two evils here.
4) Ramping up HD DVD replication capacity does not require multi-billion dollar investments, the bill of which is eventually paid by the consumers.

Sure, HD DVD PRG cancelled their press conference and released a couple of muted press releases, voicing their disappointment with Warner. Sure, Blu-ray has clear advantage when it comes to studio support once Warner stops releasing HD DVDs – but HD DVD is not dead yet. At least, I hope it’s not. And if you’re at all interested in High Definition, you should hope the same.

HD DVD still has the backing of Universal, Paramount, Dreamworks, Toshiba, Microsoft, the DVD Forum and several other, smaller companies. The format war is not over until Toshiba and the DVD Forum give up on HD DVD. And Toshiba has deep pockets, much deeper than Sony. It remains to be seen how badly Toshiba wants to win the war.

No matter what, one thing is certain: if Blu-ray wins, the consumer loses. Granted, Blu-ray’s the better of the two competing formats from a strictly technical point of view. Higher bitrate ceiling and larger disc capacity are certainly nothing to be scoffed at. But it’s also much more difficult and way more expensive to manufacture than HD DVD. And Sony has been, and still is, losing money hand over fist in their quest for HD format dominance.

The companies behind Blu-ray have spent billions of dollars in R&D and production facilities. PlayStation 3, Sony’s successful Trojan Horse, is sold at a loss. Blu-ray discs are slow to replicate and the yields are still dismal compared to DVD and HD DVD. Sony’s replication factories are also losing money since they charge studios less than the actual cost of replication; make no mistake, Sony has been subsidizing BD replication since the beginning of the format war. Sony has been (until Warner’s announcement, at least) making large monthly payments to Disney so they remain BD exclusive. And despite Warner’s press releases, it’s clear as crystal that both the BDA and HD DVD PRG were taking part in an aggressive bidding campaign for Warner’s exclusive support.

Then there’s the issue of replication capacity. Blu-ray factories are thin on the ground. Very thin. Sony owns most of them, and most are busy replicating PlayStation 3 games. Remember a while back when a bunch of Warner’s Blu-ray titles missed their release date? Not enough production capacity, pure and simple. It costs tens (hundreds, according to some sources) of millions to build a new state-of-the-art (and it has to be that, since Blu-ray’s tolerances are so tight) factory equipped with a bunch of Blu-ray production lines. Current DVD lines can’t be upgraded to produce Blu-rays, you see. On the other hand, practically all new DVD lines installed in the past couple of years can replicate HD DVDs at a flick of a switch. Another flick of the switch and the line replicates DVDs again. Now, imagine if Blu-ray wins and the format experiences a sudden rise in demand. The production capacity for that does not exist, so new factories and large investments need to be made. (I also wonder if studio execs have given any thought to the fact that most BD replication capacity on the planet is controlled by Sony, who happens to own a number of Hollywood studios…)

So what does all of this have to do with the consumer losing if Blu-ray wins? It’s staggeringly simple. None of these companies are in this game out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re in it for the money and nothing else. The format war has so far cost Sony & BDA billions upon billions and that expense WILL be recouped. And you know who’s going to foot that bill, don’t you? Indeed, we, the consumers.

The format war has been good to us, so far. Players have come down in price faster than anyone could have guessed 18 months ago. BDA and HD DVD PRG have sponsored several Amazon.com discount campaigns. They’ve also offered several free titles with purchase of a player. If HD DVD dies out, you can kiss goodbye to discounts, free titles and cheap players. It won’t happen overnight, but expect to see a slow and steady price increase of Blu-ray hardware and software if competition vanishes. Actually, now that my fever has gone down momentarily (I’ve got a very nasty flu), I can see things aren’t quite so bleak after all. Even if HD DVD dies out, Blu-ray will still have competition – in form of DVD. As studios love to charge premium for a new format, it will take a while for software prices to drop anywhere close to DVD, however. It’s up to the player manufacturers to drive down their prices to the point where Joe Average will rather buy a Blu-ray player instead of a new DVD player.

There are folks out there who believe the format war is to blame for the slow mass adoption of HD. Warner’s press release puts it like this:

The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers. A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry.

Personally, I don’t believe that for a second. There are some people out there who’ve been sitting on a fence, waiting to see which format survives. But they are a very small minority. They don’t matter in the large scheme of things. The format war is nothing compared to consumer apathy and ignorance. The masses are not on a fence – they don’t even know there’s a fence. They think they’re viewing HD simply because they purchased an HDTV. Yup, all their DVDs are now High Definition! They’ve got a proper HD feed coming over the cable, but their HDTV is hooked up to the SD feed. And they are satisfied with the image, because they just don’t know there’s something better out there. And then there’s the apathy. “DVD is good enough for me!”, they say. “You mean I have to buy a new TV and a new player to see HD? Nuh-uh, not me, buddy!”

Apathy and ignorance. Moving to a single HD format will not get rid of either one.

DVD-soittimista kannetaan nykyään 14 prosenttia tuontiveroa, eli tässä tapauksessa ~61,71 euroa. Ennen ALV:n laskemista tuontiarvoon ynnätään vero, joten ALV lasketaan summasta ~502,48 euroa. ALV (22%) on täten ~110,55 euroa.

Minun ynnäilyjeni mukaan UPS:n laskussa pitäisi siis lukea:

- tulli maahantuonnista 61,71 euroa
- alv maahantuonnista 110,55 euroa
- maksupalv. palkkio 11 euroa
yhteensä 183,26 euroa

Olenko muuten ainoa, jonka mielestä on täysin epäreilua verottaa rahtikuluja samaisen 14%:n mukaan? Sitä paitsi rahtikuluista pitäisi kantaa veroa vain EU:n rajalle saakka. Eeenivei, UPS:ltä tuli tällainen lasku:

- tulli maahantuonnista 67,43 euroa
- alv maahantuonnista 120,79 euroa
- maksupalv. palkkio 11 euroa
yhteensä 199,22 euroa

Sen verran tuossa on eroa, että aiheesta tullaan keskustelemaan kiihkeästi UPS:n kanssa.