It’s been going on now for 2 years. TWO YEARS! And there is really no sign of any major takeup of either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, the supposed heirs to the throne of DVD. Who’s gonna win this particular format war? Hell, I’m a format war nerd and even I don’t care anymore!

So what happened? Why is there no budge? Well, lots of reasons, including consumer confusion and cynicism, and the wait-and-see effect that two almost identical formats has on any market. But mostly, and you know this already, the lack of movement can be summed up in 2 (or four) words; YouTube, and BitTorrent.

Of course, that’s a simplistic notion, but you get the idea.

The crazy thing is, they should’ve seen this coming a mile off. Why? Well, it’s simple. For the last bazillion years (or at least since the advent of computers anyway), once a phenomenon occurs in the audio/music world, the video world is, oh, about 2-4 years behind (or if at the same time, at a higher price point). For example, Pro Tools opened up the world of non-linear multitrack audio editing. Soon after, Adobe Premiere and Avid revolutionized the world of video editing. Same thing, just a few years/dollars apart.

So, after Napster, Gnutella, Limewire etc, what the heck did they expect? The answer should have been, something like Napster, Gnutella, Limewire etc for video. Something like… YouTube or BitTorrent! So, rather than trying to make sure they didn’t get burned on the internet like the music industry did, the film industry has decided to get hot and bothered over something no-one seems to care about right now; HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

And you know what’s really funny? History is repeating itself almost perfectly here, because as the whole Napster/Limewire thing was taking hold bigtime, what were the boardroom meetings about? Another blimmin’ format war, Super-Audio CD versus DVD-Audio. (Okay, this is slightly revisionist of me, but you get the point, right?)

The crux of the matter is this: The industry thinks they are giving you a choice; a choice between two toasters. They both look almost exactly the same and cost much the same. They both make very nice toast. But you can’t use the same bread in both of them. And it’s possible that when you buy one, you’ll find there won’t be bread available for it in a few years, ‘cos the other one’s more popular. So your toaster is, erm, toast.

But actually, this is your 2 toaster choice. One is cheap, or even free. It’s available at the street around the corner, or even in your living room/office. The toast it makes is okay, fine, passable, reasonable. The second toaster is really 2 incompatible, expensive, and potentially soon obsolete toasters. You’ll choose the first, cheap one, right? Because you want cheap and available, not high quality, expensive, and confusing. You want mp3, not a choice between SACD/DVD-A. You want BitTorrent/YouTube (and you can have both!), not a choice between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

When will they stop trying to sell us stuff we don’t want and figure out how the internet works!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 26 07267u31e58 ppm5831 11 267 3111e pm and is filed under Technology, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.