More from Bob Stuart

Continued from 'Hindsight: 20:20'….

Anyway, now here we go again with HD DVD and Blu-ray. Here we have formats which have been developed partly because the movie houses want to sell the content all over again, and partly because the manufacturers who developed DVD got their lunch taken away by the Chinese, and they want to develop something else that could be profitable for six or eight months before that gets taken away.

But there are all these different objectives being brought to the table. And in just the same way as the music industry said, "Well, in order to make SACD or DVD-Audio sell, we want still pictures and we want menus, we want this, we want that," the [film] studios are saying of these two formats-and the specifications are very similar between HD DVD and Blu-ray-that we have to have all these bells and whistles. Things like, the players have to run Java so we can have animation and games working on the player, multiple streams so it's possible to play a disc and bring in the Icelandic soundtrack across the Internet and have it mixed in the player, or to play a disc back and be able to have alternate endings brought in off the Internet.

All these are kinds of features which, as a player manufacturer, make us think that it's impossible to test it! In fact, at one of the standards meetings I said, "Excuse me, do you think it's possible to have a specification that we can charge more for that has fewer features?" Because most of the consumers are not going to be interested in this. But it's all part of constructing something as a justification for its existence.

Now, high-definition video is better. You can't deny that. But we've shown you today how good standard-definition could be when it's rendered in a high-definition way. And a lot of high-definition content is lower quality than what we can achieve from standard. Plus the fact that although people have display devices that show high definition, they don't always show it very well.

So yes, there is a part of the market in America and Japan that will want high-definition sources. But I'm rather afraid that a large part of Europe will say, "Why do I want this? DVD is so good when I play it on my TV or on my plasma, the picture's amazing, so why do I want one of these?" They are particularly not going to want one if there's a format war.

A two-day panel at last fall's Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York City left me with a clear vision of the Blu-ray/HD DVD impasse to come; neither camp was in possession of a compelling sales pitch and the technology implementers (drive and media manufacturers, content and mastering software suppliers, etc) were hedging their bets and unwilling to bank their business plans on a strong ramp. This year's AES is in two weeks; wonder if the situation will be any different? Remember: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Followup: Bob Stuart responds

Brian

Thanks for the kind comments in the latest EDN.

The Stereophile interview was made some time ago. If you or your readers are interested, I did a video interview more recently on this topic that I think is more complete.

Scroll down on this page to find it:

http://www.cinenow.com/uk/news-2117.html

Very best

Bob