On Monday, we offhandedly declared Blu-Ray the winner over HD DVD to be the replacement of now standard DVD. Many have said that it’s “too early to tell,” but given both competitors have announced there will be products with their technology available to consumers before the end of 2005, we here at Gizmodo certainly don’t think so. On the contrary, it’s almost too late.
And so, we’re declaring Blu-Ray the winner. Sure, the fact we want to call our optical media “Blurry Discs” for the next 10 years or so is a factor, but that’s far from the prevailing one—Blu-Ray is not only technically superior to HD DVD, it has a far stronger corporate backing, and has demonstrated the ability to have more content available to push the format. After the jump, we break down the three areas—technical, financial, and commercial—where Blu-Ray has set itself apart from its only competition.
Technical
Since “technical” is quite broad, I’ll begin by telling you about the all-important capacity. After all, for consumers like yourselves, this is one of the only technical aspects (well, aspects that vary between the two formats) of the disc you’ll ever deal with. The capacity of a dual layered Blu-Ray disc is, for now at least, 50GB. The capacity of a dual layered HD DVD disc is 30GB. Already we see that Blu-Ray has 66% more overall storage capacity than HD DVD. But it doesn’t stop there; Sony has announced that layering a disc beyond dual layering is possible, allowing up to a 200GB capacity on a Blu-Ray disc with 8 layers.
One of the technical advantages of HD DVD used to be how it was “backwards compatible with DVD,” meaning, existing DVDs could be played on HD DVD players. I say “used to” because I don’t consider this an advantage anymore—not only have plenty of companies already announced various technical elements (such as read heads, lenses, etc.) to be compatible with Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD, most Blu-Ray devices shown at this year’s CEATEC JAPAN convention are also scheduled to be compatible with DVD. Backwards compatibility with DVD was one of the primary arguments HD DVD had against Blu-Ray, but as recent developments have suggested, that doesn’t really apply anymore. In fact, just this past week, we reported on the “BD/CD Dual Format Disc,” which is a disc containing both Blu-Ray and CD data layers.
https://gizmodo.com/ceatec-japan-2004-day-1-22759
So what are the other technical advantages of Blu-Ray? Supporters of HD DVD have claimed a primary strength of the format is on the production side, in that a DVD production line can be converted to an HD DVD production line “in 5 minutes.” Also, the production of HD DVD discs is said to be around the same as that of current DVDs. While there is no response from the Blu-Ray camp about how long it would take a production line to “make the switch,” Panasonic announced back in March of this year that production of Blu-Ray discs could have the same cost-per-disc price as current DVDs. Perhaps lower, even – remember that announcement about Blu-Ray discs made of paper from earlier this year? “The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage,” read the Sony press release. Likewise, Sony has developed a Blu-Ray mastering system requiring one fifth the space of current DVD mastering systems, that can also produce DVD masters.
https://gizmodo.com/sonys-paper-blu-ray-discs-9177
There has been somewhat of a shitstorm about the cartridge versus “bare” configuration of each disc type. Current Blu-Ray discs and recorders, already available to Japanese consumers, use cartridges that contain the discs themselves. I think every modern optical media goes through this stage – CDs used to have them, DVDs (DVD-RAM, that is) used to have them, and now Blu-Rays have them. But it looks like you can relax a bit if you are a cartridge hater, as all recent Blu-Ray product unveilings (such as those at this year’s CEATEC) do not feature cartridge-type drives. HD DVD, although there are still no consumer products available, have not been shown to use a cartridge type setup. Whether you consider cartridges an advantage or disadvantage is up to you, but one thing is for sure – neither Blu-Ray nor HD DVD will be using them in the future.
https://gizmodo.com/sonys-first-blu-ray-recorders-8562
Financial
When it comes to corporate backing, that of Blu-Ray far exceeds that of HD DVD. Currently, the Blu-Ray Disc Association has over 70 members. Pinpointing exactly how many companies are members of the “HD DVD Promotion Group” is difficult, because they don’t appear to have a homepage yet. The DVD Forum (over 220 members) has approved certain HD DVD standards, but saying they are all backing HD DVD is very misleading—the DVD Forum was established in 1997 for establishing standards and formats for DVD. Not HD DVD. A poster at the HD DVD booth during CEATEC JAPAN 2004 showed about 47 companies supporting HD DVD.
But it’s not just about how many companies are listed on some silly “supporter list,” because as with most things these days, quality is more important than quantity. So who’s behind Blu-Ray? In no particular order: Sony, Sharp, LG Electronics, Dell, HP, Kenwood, FujiFilm, JVC, Panasonic, Philips, Hitachi, Samsung, 20th Century Fox, and about 50+ other companies. Maybe a couple of those ring a bell? For HD DVD, familiar names include NEC, Toshiba, and Sanyo. Interestingly enough, most of the member companies on the HD DVD radar are media manufacturers, and are members of both Blu-Ray and HD DVD groups. One of the alleged primary backers of HD DVD (and member of HD DVD Promotion Group), Sanyo, even showed products at this year’s CEATEC compatible with Blu-Ray.
As you can see, the financial power of Blu-Ray Disc Association members simply dwarfs that of those behind HD DVD. I know what you’re thinking right here, though: “Well didn’t Microsoft announce the next version of Windows (Longhorn) would support HD DVD? Doesn’t that mean they support HD DVD instead of Blu-Ray?” And you’d be right, about the announcement part at least. Microsoft may be a member of the DVD Forum (which as was explained earlier doesn’t really matter), but their announcement of Windows support for HD DVD is just that – the OS will support the format. As you’d imagine, the financial backing of Microsoft to either format would give it an enormous advantage over its competitor. As I just said, though, Microsoft did not announce they would be backing HD DVD; they just said Windows will support it. There’s no reason they couldn’t come out tomorrow and say they’ll also be supporting Blu-Ray.
Commercial
None of what I just said matters if consumers can’t buy movies or other content on the formats. As history has proven time and time again, new formats are driven by content – DVD (as a movie format) did not get popular by just “being there.” Each producer had to make the decision to make the switch from VHS to DVD. Blockbuster had to make the switch from VHS to DVD, though they certainly took their sweet fucking time. All this is to say, without content, neither format is going anywhere.
Blu-Ray is once again miles ahead of HD DVD in terms of scheduled content offerings.
Data Source: DVD EXCLUSIVE Survey
This graph shows USA DVD market share broken down by content provider.
And the same graph colorized to show content providers, where Blu-Ray is indicated by blue (imagine that), and red indicates nothing. It would appear at first glance that Blu-Ray hasn’t got jack on HD DVD in this department, but take a second look – not only have Blu-Ray Disc Association members secured 30.2% of the USA’s DVD market share, HD DVD hasn’t got any yet. In fact, there haven’t been any announcements from any content providers about offering HD DVD content. There have been no official announcements of the same respect for Blu-Ray, but it’s obvious at least Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM will be providing content, given Sony’s recent purchase of MGM. I think it’s also safe to assume that there’s a good reason Fox announced they would be joining the Blu-Ray Disc Association. While these three companies may hold “only” a 30.2% market share, a Panasonic representative at this year’s CEATEC stated that these same three companies hold 46.1% of the current title base.
As you can see from the graph, though, there are still a couple key players for offering movie content. Namely, Warner Brothers and Disney.
Of course, there is plenty more to optical discs than just movies. It’s not like DVDs are used for only movies, after all. Once again Sony has demonstrated their influence of the industry in this area, by confirming the Playstation 3 would indeed be using Blu-Ray as its choice format. If that isn’t enough for you, let’s think about some of the hardware that has been presented.
https://gizmodo.com/playstation-3-to-support-blu-ray-18979
Consumer level Blu-Ray products have been out in Japan since as early as April 2003, from Sony. Around the same time this year, Panasonic debuted their Blu-Ray recorder. I think the best representative of how far Blu-Ray has come physically, however, was shown at this year’s CEATEC JAPAN 2004. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer, TDK, Mitsubishi, JVC, and Mitsumi all showed up to represent the format — HD DVD was represented only by Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo. JVC even announced this past week that they have created a new Blu-Ray compatible lens with one tenth the volume of current lenses, allegedly making “portable Blu-Ray products” possible.
So there you have it. Technically, financially, and commercially, Blu-Ray already has HD DVD beaten. Unless NEC and Toshiba pull out some trump card for HD DVD within the next year—and clearly, we don’t see it happening—expect Blu-Ray to replace DVD.
Official Blu-Ray Homepage [Blu-Ray Disc Association]
Related:
Blu-Ray Archives [Gizmodo]
