Call For One Optical HD Format
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 1/24/2005
Format battles in this business are always good copy for reporters, and entertaining for those in the industry outside the fray. They usually provide a candid and inside look at the strategic interests of top companies. But the bottom line is still the bottom line: Format wars traditionally cost both sides a lot of money, and cost retailers lost sales, because amid the confusion many customers sit on the sidelines, and wait for a winner.
All of this came to mind once again as the proponents of Blu-ray and HD DVD jockeyed for position with a variety of announcements and press conferences during International CES. Amid all the meetings, two people finally seized the middle ground, interestingly enough a retailer and a Hollywood executive.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Digital Entertainment Group's (DEG) president Bob Chapek and Best Buy's executive VP/GMM Ron Boire urged both sides to get together and come up with one optical format for HDTV during a DEG press conference at CES. (See TWICE, Jan. 17, 2005, p. 1.)
In discussions of the technical aspects of Blu-ray and HD DVD in the past year or so, each side has said it is “technically impossible” to make one standard. While Chapek acknowledges the “significant differences in the physical formats,” he added, “Just because it's difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't try.”
And Chapek said that if a compromise is not reached, “a lot of money will be spent, most of it in vain, trying to beat the other guy to the punch and confusing consumers in the meantime.”
Boire noted that “from the voice of the consumer and for a retail perspective, there is no more strategic issue to Best Buy and to our customers than this industry coming together.”
The first HD DVD decks are supposed to debut at retail in the United States by the end of this year. Blu-ray decks are set to arrive in 2006. If things continue as they are, there will be more money spent on pronouncements, claims, counterclaims and companies jockeying for position during calendar year 2005 in the United States. The money spent on the format war this year will probably far exceed what either side will generate in actual retail sales for this year or for 2006.
While it may turn out to be impossible for the key features of Blu-ray and HD DVD to be included in one, new optical format for HDTV, both sides should at least sit down and try. The hardware makers backing either format not only have sales and profits of their companies on the line, but the financial well-being of their retail customers and movie makers too.
And if they are successful in creating a new optical format for HDTV so we won't see that product on store shelves by late 2006 or early 2007, that's no tragedy. Demand should still be cultivated for the still-emerging DVD recorder and burner market, which has been all but overshadowed during the debate about Blu-ray and HD DVD.
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