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High-def war: The end ...?
Consider just some of the formats, extant, dying or defunct, of the little silver disc: CD, VCD, HDCD, SACD, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, DVD, DVD-A, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM
- By Gautam Raja, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:40 February 25, 2008
Consider just some of the formats, extant, dying or defunct, of the little silver disc: CD, VCD, HDCD, SACD, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, DVD, DVD-A, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM.
When Sony and Toshiba threw their high-definition DVD formats into that unholy mix, one company chose the name Blu-ray, the other chose HD-DVD. Guess who deserved to die a slow and painful death?
Forget about resolution and high-frequency lasers... Sony deserved its win just for a name that stood out. (It also helped that it sounds superhero-ish in a Red Flash, Green Lantern way.) Finally, there's vindication for Betamax, another Sony format with a great name that was thrashed by something that sounded like a renegade snippet of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Remember the end of Flash Gordon, the movie? At the end, Emperor Ming is skewered by the nose of a spaceship, he appears to die, and "The End" fades up. Then a gloved hand is seeing picking up Ming's ring, and a question mark appears. That's what's happening now in high-def world.
Cut and run
What if the hipsters are right and the very concept of high-def DVD is going down in flames? Then Toshiba has been lucky to cut and run now, leaving Sony to battle streaming video, and maybe shamefacedly inter Blu-ray in the family tomb that houses VHS's late enemy.
I'm not much of a home-movie person, and certainly not an early adopter of technology, but I've kept an interested eye on the format war and the counter-moves on the internet. Netflix, the DVD lending company, recently removed the monthly quota on its supplementary Watch Now streaming service, even as it helped kill HD-DVD by choosing to distribute only Blu-ray (apart from regular DVDs, of course). Right now, the streaming library is B-movie heaven, but I'm sure that will change.
The streaming service works well - I've been using it to watch Fawlty Towers as well as the US and UK versions of The Office over and over again. But even more impressive is the online player at Abc.com. I've been watching the first season of Lost on Abc.com (I told you I wasn't an early adopter) and am really impressed by the quality of picture and ease with which so much resolution streams across the void. If I had the hardware, I could even watch the show in HDTV.
As an aside, I'm dramatically less impressed by Lost itself... to me, it's just a sophisticated version of The Bold and the Beautiful. But then, in the great tradition of seamy soap operas, I complain and complain, and then religiously watch an episode or two a day.
While resolution is slowly becoming an issue in the digital audio world, I'm willing to guess there are movie buffs who are now thoroughly sick of format hopping. Consider that there are probably some really unlucky early adopters who have copies of their favourite movies on Betamax, VHS, Laserdisc, VCD, DVD and HD-DVD. And now, they have to go out and buy the Blu-ray copy. Or the shotgun.
At least, there's an upper limit in sight-a storage, delivery and display system that matches the resolution of the human eye. Unless, of course, two sparring companies come up with a way to boost that. There's one technology I won't be an adopter of, early or late.
Meanwhile, as resolutions available via streaming get higher and higher, we get close to the spectacular death of an unrelated business: the drink-table interface industry. Once all those silver discs are defunct, nobody on Earth will need to buy another coaster again.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
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