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R.I.P. HD DVD
I can’t say that I’m too surprised (especially after their dismal showing at CES this year) but it appears that Toshiba is letting HD DVD go silently into the night.
The format wars have been huge news these past few years, and it feels odd to say that Blu-ray has really won. I’ve said time and time again that physical media is going to be obsolete in the very near future (in favor of HD downloads) but I’m a little shocked that Toshiba is giving up the ghost so soon. But with getting dumped by Netflix and Wal-mart, I suppose it truly was only a matter of time. For some reason, I always felt like I was in Camp HD DVD. It was totally arbitrary side-choosing, but maybe spurned on by the fact that I was raised a Red Sox fan, and thusly (until very recently) a glutton for punishment.
Well, HD DVD, it was a pretty good run. I enjoyed using my Xbox HD DVD drive, but I guess I’ll be getting more play from my PS3 now. I wonder how quickly HD DVD will leave the store walls and become eBay gold (lol). Will a whole subculture of HD DVD enthusiasts spring up? Fans that refuse to let go? How does Microsoft feel about this whole thing? Do they care? (Answer: No.)
So many questions! What do you think?
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#2 written by Grizz 3 years ago
Though it’s no surprise now, only a year ago I thought for sure HD DVD would win. Just like what happened with VHS tapes versus BetaMax tapes. The porn industry backed VHS and so VHS ended up winning even against superior technology. When the adult film industry backed HD DVD initially… I thought for sure the same thing would happen. But my how piracy and high speed connections have changed the game!
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I knew there was some reason that $100 players this past Christmas still seemed like a sub-par deal. Though usually a very early adopter, I’ve stayed out of HD discs so far, and am still not rushing forth to buy. I wonder if mainstream (non-videophile) consumers will now embrace Blu-ray, or if most will feel DVD is as good as they need. I hope the HD-DVD owners get years of service out of their machines and the discs they’ve so far bought. I’m there with them in spirit, my laserdisc player under my arm.
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I don’t think either format is going to see the type of success we have seen with previous formats like DVD or CD. Content is too expensive still, and DVD is good enough for most people.
I think we will see that digital ‘disk free’ delivery is going to be the norm soon, once delivering HD content over the web becomes more feasible and then blu-ray & HD DVD will both be screwed.
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#12 written by Wes 3 years ago
Personally, though downloaded content will continue to increase due to the falling prices of storage, I don’t think we will see the end of physical media in the short to medium term.
The two-fold barrier that needs to be overcome is affordable highspeed bandwidth, at an acceptable compression quality now that more and more of us are using high definition displays. All things being equal, the value of getting low compression quality on a physical disc will be ahead of waiting hours to download a full length movie until residential fiber optic bandwidth prices drop down to current DSL-like prices ($14.99 for example). -
I would love to see more HD downloads. I too think that they will be the eventual winner. In today’s information age, do we really see ourselves going out to the store to buy optical disks in 10 years? However, I would really miss the special features if the download model persists. I enjoy director’s commentary, making of, etc.
I’d like to see Apple offer a movie capsule download that contains everything a DVD does, special feature’s and all. Instead of just the raw movie file.
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I thought since the beginning that this HD war was stupid, no one from consumers to producers would benefit of it. It has only slow down the adoption of the HD format and completely lose “non geeks” consumers.
The HD-DVD was not supported enough, especially from the console side : MS made the HD-DVD drive an option, which in my opinion deserved a lot the format compared to Sony with their PS3. The other major actor, Nintendo, decided not to support any HD format (for the moment).
None of the two formats has real advantage against the other one : i still laugh about their stupid press releases about how much they could store on a single disc ! And what about interactivity ? Most of the early players didn’t support the BD-live, HDMI 1.3 or even have a network plug !
Now i’m happy that finally one of them won – even if i would have a preference for the HD-DVD, but all of this was only a question of money and contracts, don’t you think ?
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#16 written by Shane 3 years ago
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Originally, I was a fence-sitter. Eventually I had to pick a side and Blu-Ray won for me as a home theater buff because it offered the best quality in audio and video, a notch better than HD DVD.
And, I know this is silly, but there are too many D’s in “HD DVD”. If you look at some cool tech names like “Apple”, “Flickr” and “Twitter”, “Blu-Ray” is a simple two-syllable word vs. HD DVD’s five. I always felt like “HD DVD” was a triple word score because of how long it took to say it.
Also, the PS3 is an amazing machine. I liked its interface vs. the one on the 360.
But, I still have my HD DVDs. I’ll still use them until such time as they become available on Blu-Ray.
It was a good run, and definitely a fun war to watch. I have to say, V, that this war took much less time to pan out than it did back when DVD was first released and we had to wait what felt like a lifetime for studios to even get into that market.
In the end, we have high-def movies. As a former 35mm film collector, I can’t tell you how happy I am. Nothing will beat film for theatrical presentations, but for home we finally have something respectable. I used to go into thes high-end video stores and they’d show laserdiscs and say “doesn’t it look like film?”. HA! No.
Now it’s as close as we’re going to get.
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#19 written by Punterjoe 3 years ago
HD-DVD may be the first to go, but that doesn’t make Blu Ray a winner. I think it will be like SACD & DVD-A. Both were overpriced and had poor title support. Both were an improvement over CD, but in the end, not enough people cared.
I look at my HD-DVD player as a rather expensive upscaling DVD player. $100 for a player wasn’t the problem, it was $30 per disc. When I can get a title @480p for $20 less, and it’s something I only plan to watch once, why “invest” in an HD-DVD version?
Maybe if both camps had reached a detente & released a single format – and sold titles at closer-to-dvd prices, the next-gen format might have stood a chance. As it stands now, I’m just waiting for BluRay to die too. And since Sony is behind that, I won’t feel half as bad about it’s demise as I do about HD-DVD. BluRay is the new UMD. Good riddance!
At least the HD-DVDs will take up less closet space than my old Laserdiscs
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#22 written by John 3 years ago
I think there is one thing that that is going to keep HD downloads away for awhile and that is the fact that the US has crappy bandwidth compared to the rest of the world. It’s going to be a long time before we can watch a streaming HD file without any buffering. I feel that physical media is here to stay for now so I’m seeing blu already. That BR rep you interviewed concerning BD live was really flaky but your charm made me fall in love with you. hehe!
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#23 written by Herve 3 years ago
I will certainly not purchase a Blu-Ray player as long as there only are hollywoodian superproductions released in this format. It should also better be cheap. DVD is already too expensive for a film I would only watch 2 or 3 times. VOD is better for most people.
Also, I would welcome an Audio Blu-Ray, as a lossless, perfect-quality replacement for the CD. Nobody would download 40GB of data for 12 songs, so it would be a great added-value to the Wild Web offer, and certainly better than this poor CD whose content can’t easily be transfered to an MP3 player, due to useless DRM.
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#24 written by eric f. 3 years ago
So many comments…so little time.
a few thoughts:
1: @David, digital delivery is a long time coming from being the “norm”. sure, most of us have HDTV and networked gaming consoles, etc, but we are the exception. Most average people don’t even have HDTVs yet, and when they upgrade will surely choose an HD DVD player as the next upgrade. It’ll be a long time after that if ever before they have a networked tv. to most people that is way over their heads. they don’t even know it exists. the only way they would get OD content is through their cable box.
2: As evident in #1 (see above) Even though Blu-ray won, I believe that the generic reference to it will be “HD DVD”. when you walk into Blockbuster, you will ask for the HD version…not Blu-ray. It will be like Xerox or Kleenex.
3. @ veronica: I must disagree. MS will likely put out the Blu-ray 360 add-on.
4. I was an early adopter and actually purchased 3 HD DVD titles. Planet Earth, and 2 HD DVD exclusives, Elizabeth and Elizabeth The Golden Age. The only one I regret for long term use is Planet Earth, but until I no longer have my 360, it’s a non-issue. I originally chose HD-DVD as my fave because my Harmony 880 worked better with my 360 than my PS3. Funny reason, right? but now I got the Nyko BluRay and the PS3 worked almost perfectly.
5. @ Punterjoe… Yeah it does.
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#25 written by ksimp 3 years ago
@eric.f, Nail on the head. When I hear ‘HD downloads will be the norm soon’, I quickly think of my non-geek friends/family/acquaintances, who don’t own an HDTV, still use dial-up or at best DSL, and are just now learning the differences between analog and digital TV because they’re being forced too. This way of thinking is still the norm. I’ve been a software developer for 10 years, and a large % of my contemporaries don’t have the setup/equipment to accomodate HD downloads. Physical media, at least in the video format, will be viable for a long time.
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I was trying to read this on my iPhone this morning while waiting for breakfast but too much going on around me with the kids. Glad you twittered the post
I too am surprised that they are just going away. I really thought it was going to be like the dvd wars where they would just both exist and everyone would have dual players. But I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that we are watching content on these discs, not just putting things on them. And so when big companies make decisions, things change, people move.
I agree that everything will soon be downloadable and discs will be a thing of the past. Even backups will be digital. I also agree that I don’t think MS will come out with blu-ray player, not needed for gaming. Downloads FTW!
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#29 written by Wes 3 years ago
Unless MS is able to offer a blu-ray add-on without having to subsidize the cost, I don’t see this as a path MS should go down at this point. I agree with VB. Their strength since the beginning has been online infrastructure, so strategically it would make better sense to spend more capital and marketing into pushing for more downloadable content, and improvements to media center functionality.
As I mentioned above, I don’t think we’re at the right point where bandwidth, storage space and minimal compression will make downloads more attractive to the average person watching on their large screen HDTV, but in the medium term I agree that we will be there soon enough. -
I totally agree with @ksimp about ‘HD downloads will be the norm soon’. The majority of people are far from this : they don’t really know what HD mean, have poor internet connexion (thanks to high prices in some European countries), etc… Above this, even if i’m buying/downloading stuff on the net, i love much more having things in my hands, like beautiful DVD collectors (poor shelves !).
## note to self : maybe i should touch more my twitter friends or they will think i don’t love them ?
##@Veronica let’s wait few weeks before the official announcement from Toshiba and then Microsoft will clarify this. In my opinion, if MS want to focus on gaming, okay no Blu-ray player is necessary. But if they want to push the XBOX360 as the ultimate Media Center, then they have no choice to go to Blu-Ray : the market is not mature enough, at least in Europe !
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Look at it this way. Unless the movie studios start licensing every single movie for same day online release as their DVD release, people are always going to want a DVD or Blu-Ray player. So far, they feel it has been profitable to put a month delay on OD and DL content after the DVD release, so I doubt this will change very soon.
until then, the 360 needs a Blu-Ray player to be “cutting edge” otherwise they’re simply offering old content.
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#35 written by Vance 3 years ago
As I wrote over on Ryan’s blog (btw, thanks for not using his animated gif!):
Long live the procrastinator! I have been simply too lazy to try to figure this BR v. HDDVD dispute out and, once again, my sloth has paid off! I am still putting off the “type of Hi-Def” TV decision, and the “iPhone v. rest of the field” decision, so if you policy-influencers would hurry up and get those sorted out, I would appreciate it!
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Rumor or not… it seems HD DVD is dead. I thought for sure it would win out for the following social marketing reasons only:
* it’s name: HD DVD. People know what HD means. They know what DVD means. They have no idea what a blu-ray and whether or not it wants to sting you.
* Blu-ray, backed by “we are eternally proprietary” Sony, almost killed it with their PS3′s coming in at about $1 billion US with a stock of about 12. Beta-max, memory sticks? bad names, bad history, never won before so…
But then I found out that MS was backing HD DVD… and well, that pretty much spelled the end of it for me.
Either way, I’m going back to analog television piracy as soon as everyone “switches” to digital. Hang on to your wire hangers!
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@Veronica: I admire you for sticking to your guns, and I definitely agree that an all-downloaded, all-digital content distribution model is eventually imminent. But I’m just not sure your Average Joe/Jane is ready to give up owning a piece of plastic with a movie burned on it that he/she can watch whenever he/she wants for a digital download that he/she can only watch for 24 hours.
We need some better downloaded-content consumer options before they can really take off, I think.
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#39 written by The Dude 3 years ago
LMFAO @ Veronica, or anyone else, legitimately thinking that downloads will be the norm while Blu-Ray is viable. It seems to be a ‘sour grapes’ excuse used on behalf of those that unfortunately adopted into a format that was obviously destined to fail with HD-DVD.
They won’t be, let me count the ways:
1. Download speeds aren’t high enough to allow for genuine high-def downloads. Outside of select countries with dense urban populations, most of the western market does not have access to fiber optic. If they’re lucky they have access to cable broadband, which is constantly being capped and throttled by telecomm companies. If they can’t stand the bandwidth constraints of torrents, don’t expect them to be onboard with their support for everyone downloading high-def movies.
2. Storage is not high enough for downloading and storing high definition content, especially when each high definition release is over 25 GBs. You’d need boxes that literally have 50+ TB of storage in order to allow for movie lovers to readily download, and store, their content. Perhaps the studios could forego sotrage if they wanted to completely stream content, though optimal FiOS networks are, maximally, at 30 Mbs, which is well below the threshold for Blu-Ray’s 54 Mbs bitrate, and even so I’m not sure that with FiOS the telecomms would want everyone downloading high-def content continuously as it would burden their network.
It’s an unrealistic proposition.
Digital “Downloads” are only going to cut into the rental market such as on demand, pay-per-view, and netflix.
They are no threat to Blu-Ray while it is a viable format for the next 10+ years.
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I have been one of the fence sitters on this one, I am surprised that Toshiba gave up so soon, but Micro$oft is not going to be affected to much by this development. Toshiba has to swallow the billions of dollars they spent on the production line, I think that if Toshiba had finished development and production on schedule, they would have stood a great chance of kicking Sony’s behind. Remember, HD-DVD was suppose to have a year’s head start on Blu-Ray, but the thing that killed HD-DVD was M$ making the HD-DVD Drive a option on the Xbox 360.
I am with Veronica on the Blu-Ray drive going into to the Xbox 360 directly, at this point, a rumor is a rumor. I will believe it when I see it. There is going to be some cost involved with switching drive technology, it is not going to be a free ride for Micro$soft if the decide to go Blu-Ray
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#42 written by Slushturtle 3 years ago
Yeah, tough to hear this news. While I still think that HD DVD was the better and more polished standard, ultimately there’s not much of a difference between the formats for the consumer. More people bought Blu, which prompted Warner to take sides, and the rest is history.
I knew it was over when I walked into a Best Buy later last year and saw a tiny little display for HD DVD and THREE gigantic Blu-ray demo stands.
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#44 written by C.A.Carr 3 years ago
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Blu-ray is more fun to say so I’m pleased with the outcome ;>