Warner Bros. has announced that it will plant its feet firmly in the Blu-Ray camp, which may deal the death blow to HD-DVD. There are all kinds of death blows. Some take a lot more time to claim the body than others, and some are subject to miraculous cures. But just weeks after Sony’s Sir Howard Stringer declared that there was no end in sight to the format wars, his company looks like the victor. What does that mean for consumers? If you have an HD television and you’ve been sitting on the fence waiting for a winner, you may start feeling safe enough to buy. Which will help bring down prices for those of us planning to hold out a little while longer.
Read an interview with two Warner executives about the decision in The Washington Post.
Matt Rosenberg
in
media morphing
|
Permalink
| Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0)
|
Strategists & Planners
Comments (1)
I think that neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray will "win".
If the people behind the two formats were interested in any longterm "win" they'd be pushing formats that were open, not closed walled-gardens (that model failed - and is still failing - for so many companies).
While one of these two formats may emerge dominant for a short period of time (after burning a huge amount of their budget paying for the 'format wars'), I think that the seismic (consumer-led) push towards formats that can be easily moved from one device/platform to another will mean that a third (or fourth, or fifth...) format will eventually emerge dominant.
If you look at audio formats on the web, companies like RealNetworks put huge amounts of time and money into creating "lock-in" applications (RealNetworks' RealPlayer is a great example of this - it's notorious for trying to set itself as your "one true" media player, and pushing its own file formats). During the 1990s it gained quite a footing, but as people wanted to play their music files on their PCs and over devices such as portable music players, RealPlayers' "lock-in" format became obsolete and shunned.
Closer to today, companies have tried to build other walled-gardens using DRM. But over the last 18 months we've seen all 4 major music companies (Universal, EMI, Warners, and most recently, Sony) abandon this destructive policy. Not because they wanted to, but because they were losing sales by attempting to control the format. There were, of course, a myriad other problems with DRM and they all contributed to its failure.
So, while this futile boxing match between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will probably go on, the audience is rapidly turning away and watching something else.
Posted by Paul Watson | January 12, 2008 3:31 AM
Posted on January 12, 2008 03:31