NAB 2008: Blu-Ray's Triumph Provides Mixed Blessings

In many of my NAB meetings this week, along with the general feeling on the show floor and in technical sessions, I’ve discerned a general sense of relief at the end of the blue laser format wars. Content owners now have a consistent format on which to distribute their material in the retail channel, and consumers now have a consistent media on which to archive their personally camcorder-captured and computer-authored masterpieces. The timing is in a sense perfect, too, because with the NTSC shutoff less than a year away, a large population of consumers are going to be exposed to ATSC-delivered high-definition video for the first time, which will also cultivate desire on their part for high-resolution optical disc-housed content.

Blockbuster’s now rolling out Blu-ray format support nationwide in its brick-and-mortar stores. Sony’s just rolled out DTS-HD Master Audio format support in the PlayStation 3, further justifying the platform I’ve long recommended as the ideal Blu-ray player (although those of us with highly desireable first-generation 60 GByte systems might have a problem if our units ever need to be replaced). Ironically, Microsoft released a firmware update (presumably the last) a few weeks ago for its Xbox 360 HD DVD Player add-on, too. Speaking of HD DVD, read-only optical drives for PCs are pretty cheap nowadays (at least until inventory’s depleted, that is). And for those of you who’ve already acquired HD DVD gear, Best Buy just joined a list of retailers (also including folks like Amazon and Wal-mart) who are compensating customers that picked the ‘wrong’ format.

On that ‘wrong format’ note, though, I’ll again admit to still feeling some degree of remorse that HD DVD didn’t come out on top, an emotion based solely on feature-versus-feature comparisons i.e. not on any particular vendor affinity or aversion. From the very beginning, all HD DVD players supported features that the vast majority of Blu-ray players still don’t implement; built-in Ethernet ports for easy upgrades and web-based content augmentation, rich user interface interactivity, etc. Admittedly, this homogeny was easier for the HD DVD camp to achieve, because it contained a smaller number of hardware and software standards-development participants. As well-known and -respected video pundit Joe Kane recently put it:

Sometimes fewer organizations involved in a format are more efficient, especially when it comes to implementing innovations. In the larger Blu-ray group we’ve often suspected the word “optional” was necessary to reach agreements on specifications and or changes among its many supporters.

Going forward, though, Blu-ray vendors still plan to sell a mix of v1.x and v2 profile equipment, thereby enabling them to hit a spread of system price points. This lingering profile diversity will further extend the format fragmentation, thereby providing content creators with decreased motivation to support the v2 enhancements that the format desperately needs if it is to clearly differentiate itself from red laser DVD (aside, of course, from the questionably-beneficial-to-the-masses high resolution images). And even with features that all Blu-ray players are supposed to support, such as BD-Java, player-to-player implementation inconsistencies (both in terms of performance and fundamental functionality) drive content creators batty. I received a tangible reminder of this fact when I read through the Joe Kane-authored reviewer notes for the just-released Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics disc, which Joe decided to release in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Check out these Blu-ray-critical excerpts:

Using HD DVD menu interactivity as a benchmark for the Blu-ray authoring added a level of complexity that pushed our delivery schedule back by about six months. It isn’t otherwise being done for most Blu-ray titles because of inconsistent player capability. The HD DVD of HD Basics is reasonably consistent in its performance in all of the players we’ve tested. Differences exist but they are minor when compared to what we see with the Blu-ray disc in that format’s players.

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