OMEN
01-23-2008, 10:10 AM
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Format wars ... an elaborate display at the Blu-ray stand at the Consumer Electronics Show 2008
AUSTRALIA is leading the world in the next-generation DVD format war, with figures showing home cinema buffs have ignored confusion in other countries and already crowned a winner in the multibillion-dollar battle: Blu-ray.
Movie studios are promising to reward Australia's quick decision-making with a host of new blockbuster titles this year plus groundbreaking features that will have us playing dice games with Johnny Depp, hacking computers for Kevin Smith and cooking up a storm with a rat in a French kitchen.
These new additions are timed to ensure 2008 is the year high-definition DVD players become common in lounge rooms across the globe.
The high-definition DVD war began early last year in Australia, following the launch of two rival DVD formats – Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Like the VHS and Beta videocassette war before it, the two DVD formats are each supported by entertainment and technology heavyweights and both groups insist consumers pick a side. Both formats offer five times the screen resolution of standard DVDs, making movies look crisper, more lifelike and more involving than ever. Filmmakers such as Ratatouille writer and director Brad Bird insist the technology delivers movies "exactly as they were intended" and with pictures better than those on most cinema screens.
But the two formats have important differences too. The Blu-ray format, developed by Sony and Pioneer and named after the blue-violet laser used to create it, can store 25GB on a single-layer DVD and 50GB on increasingly popular double-layer discs. Blu-ray DVDs can also process information faster and feature Java applications, though the software and hardware is more expensive to produce.
Meanwhile, the HD-DVD format, supported by Toshiba, can only store 15GB on a single-layer disc and 30GB on a double-layer disc. However, HD-DVD discs are available free of region coding, unlike Blu-ray discs, so you could play movies purchased in the US or UK, for example.
The war between the two formats is reaching its height in the US, where sales are increasing and consumers voting with their wallets. Blu-ray Disc Association spokesman and Pioneer Electronics senior vice-president Andy Parsons says the stakes for either side have never been greater.
"It took us almost a year after Blu-ray was first launched in June 2006 to deliver a million disc sales, but it took only three months to achieve 2 million sales and then another three months after that to achieve 3 million sales," he says. "At the moment we have a two-to-one sales advantage over HD-DVD (in the US)."
Mr Parsons does not completely dismiss HD-DVD though. Despite Blu-ray's overwhelming software lead, Toshiba is making things difficult on the hardware front.
Toshiba continues to discount its HD-DVD players, creating a $US200 gulf between the cheapest HD-DVD player and the cheapest Blu-ray alternative in the US.
In Australia Toshiba offers a HD-DVD player for $299 with four movies to compete with Blu-ray players such as Sharp's AQUOS Blu-ray Disc Player, which is on sale for $749.
"That's how they get their market – they cut the price," Mr Parsons says. "That has been Toshiba's strategy so far."
In its favour, the Blu-ray has a powerful weapon in the PlayStation 3. Both versions of the next-generation games console come with the ability to play Blu-ray DVDs, making PlayStation addicts instant Blu-ray fans.
Mr Parsons says more than 2 million Americans have already bought a PS3 including "many who bought it just to play Blu-ray DVDs". In Australia that number sits at just 175,000, after the high-price console struggled to compete with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii in its first year.
But Australia is a different market to the US when it comes to next-generation DVD adoption.
Research by GfK shows Blu-ray DVD players and movies dominate their HD-DVD alternatives in Australia and represented 95.2 per cent of the market by October. More than 97,700 of the 101,600 high-definition DVD players sold in Australia played Blu-ray DVDs, compared to only 3800 that played HD-DVD discs. Blu-ray is also winning the software war, with consumers buying 87,000 Blu-ray DVDs and only 14,400 HD-DVD discs.
"This report quite clearly depicts the current state of play in the high-definition format market in Australian homes," Sony Australia managing director Carl Rose says. "Across the key areas of high-definition entertainment, from hardware to content, these figures show that Blu-ray is distinctly the format of choice for consumers."
These figures do come at an early stage in the high-definition DVD format war though, according to Sony International vice-president Matt Brown. He says early adopters are still leading the way for this technology and have been restrained by the limited number of next-generation DVD players and movie titles on the market so far.
"This is changing quickly though, and it's at the point now where every time you release a new movie you break a new record for shipments," Mr Brown says.
An important element in this DVD format war is movie studio support. Neither format can win the war without it, as no consumer will buy a next-generation DVD player if it won't play their favourite movies.
Blu-ray has long enjoyed the largest range of studio support (70 per cent), but suffered a blow in August last year when heavyweights Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG agreed to distribute their movies in the HD-DVD format for 18 months.
These studios own movies such as Cloverfield, Bee Movie and Shrek, and their deal led many industry experts to predict the DVD format war would continue until the contract expires.
But HD-DVD also suffered a blow this month when Warner Bros, which controls 20 per cent of the movie market, announced it would no longer support the format and would release only Blu-ray DVDs. The move surprised the industry, including Toshiba, which cancelled a planned HD-DVD event and declared a subsequent press conference "a tough day".
Despite intense competition for DVD format loyalty, Disney worldwide brand marketing executive Gordon Ho says the studio's decision to support Blu-ray was simple.
"For our movies to look really good in high-definition we knew we needed more than a 30GB disc, which is what HD-DVD offers," he says. "Guess what? Today pretty much every one of Disney's movies is released on a 50GB disc. Paramount recently had issues trying to get all of their content on a 30GB HD-DVD disc, and so their packaging listed some features that weren't on the disc. Ultimately we needed that space for the best pictures, the best sound and the interactive features you want to add to a high-definition DVD."
Mr Ho admits other considerations also played a part in Disney's decision, including the added durability of Blu-ray DVDs, its large support base and the lack of Blu-ray DVD piracy (new equipment is needed to produce the discs).
But Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment president Bob Chapek says it is Blu-ray's extra storage and speed that will ultimately transform home movies.
"Blu-ray enables us to break the line between the movie and the movie extra," he says. "Because of the capacity of the disc, plus its processing speed, the world of movies and bonus features becomes one. It becomes one seamless experience where you can make choices on the fly because they're now all on one disc."
As a result, some Blu-ray DVDs will allow you to view "picture-in-picture" movie extras – miniature, behind-the-scenes documentaries that screen in a box in the corner of your television screen. Mr Chapek says many other movie extras are planned for future Disney Blu-ray releases, including interactive games.
Twentieth Century Fox is planning to add interactive elements to its Blu-ray DVD discs. Technology executive vice-president Danny Kaye says it plans to add features such as a world-saving trivia quiz to its Day After Tomorrow and a function that lets you search for scenes by their content (explosions or car chases, for example).
The studio's Die Hard 4.0 Blu-ray title features a game with video instructions and gentle ribbing from actor Kevin Smith, Independence Day will feature an alien scavenger hunt game, and Master And Commander will let you see a map showing the location of the movie's two ships at any point during the film.
Mr Kaye says some future titles will let you transfer a digital copy of the film to your portable media player, be it an iPod or a PlayStation Portable, so you can enjoy it while travelling.
Despite these promising developments, Mr Kaye admits the DVD format war is still "confusing to the consumer" and "a huge problem for the movie industry", as it divides consumers along technology battle lines.
Mr Parsons says the end of the war cannot come soon enough: "(Consumers) are getting sick of this format war... they were sick of this format war when it started."
"If I were to have made a guess about this war a year ago, I would have thought it would be over by now," he says. "I think the Paramount and Dreamworks deals threw a spanner in the works but, regardless, Blu-ray is still on track to win and I believe it will prevail."
Mr Chapek is more optimistic, fuelled by Blu-ray success in Australia and other countries.
"It's probably over now in some countries because of Blu-ray's humungous lead in market share," he says. "It's over already in Australia, in Japan and in Europe. The only place it's even talked about is the US. By this year, sometime during this year, it will be evident that HD-DVD is over."
News AU
Format wars ... an elaborate display at the Blu-ray stand at the Consumer Electronics Show 2008
AUSTRALIA is leading the world in the next-generation DVD format war, with figures showing home cinema buffs have ignored confusion in other countries and already crowned a winner in the multibillion-dollar battle: Blu-ray.
Movie studios are promising to reward Australia's quick decision-making with a host of new blockbuster titles this year plus groundbreaking features that will have us playing dice games with Johnny Depp, hacking computers for Kevin Smith and cooking up a storm with a rat in a French kitchen.
These new additions are timed to ensure 2008 is the year high-definition DVD players become common in lounge rooms across the globe.
The high-definition DVD war began early last year in Australia, following the launch of two rival DVD formats – Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Like the VHS and Beta videocassette war before it, the two DVD formats are each supported by entertainment and technology heavyweights and both groups insist consumers pick a side. Both formats offer five times the screen resolution of standard DVDs, making movies look crisper, more lifelike and more involving than ever. Filmmakers such as Ratatouille writer and director Brad Bird insist the technology delivers movies "exactly as they were intended" and with pictures better than those on most cinema screens.
But the two formats have important differences too. The Blu-ray format, developed by Sony and Pioneer and named after the blue-violet laser used to create it, can store 25GB on a single-layer DVD and 50GB on increasingly popular double-layer discs. Blu-ray DVDs can also process information faster and feature Java applications, though the software and hardware is more expensive to produce.
Meanwhile, the HD-DVD format, supported by Toshiba, can only store 15GB on a single-layer disc and 30GB on a double-layer disc. However, HD-DVD discs are available free of region coding, unlike Blu-ray discs, so you could play movies purchased in the US or UK, for example.
The war between the two formats is reaching its height in the US, where sales are increasing and consumers voting with their wallets. Blu-ray Disc Association spokesman and Pioneer Electronics senior vice-president Andy Parsons says the stakes for either side have never been greater.
"It took us almost a year after Blu-ray was first launched in June 2006 to deliver a million disc sales, but it took only three months to achieve 2 million sales and then another three months after that to achieve 3 million sales," he says. "At the moment we have a two-to-one sales advantage over HD-DVD (in the US)."
Mr Parsons does not completely dismiss HD-DVD though. Despite Blu-ray's overwhelming software lead, Toshiba is making things difficult on the hardware front.
Toshiba continues to discount its HD-DVD players, creating a $US200 gulf between the cheapest HD-DVD player and the cheapest Blu-ray alternative in the US.
In Australia Toshiba offers a HD-DVD player for $299 with four movies to compete with Blu-ray players such as Sharp's AQUOS Blu-ray Disc Player, which is on sale for $749.
"That's how they get their market – they cut the price," Mr Parsons says. "That has been Toshiba's strategy so far."
In its favour, the Blu-ray has a powerful weapon in the PlayStation 3. Both versions of the next-generation games console come with the ability to play Blu-ray DVDs, making PlayStation addicts instant Blu-ray fans.
Mr Parsons says more than 2 million Americans have already bought a PS3 including "many who bought it just to play Blu-ray DVDs". In Australia that number sits at just 175,000, after the high-price console struggled to compete with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii in its first year.
But Australia is a different market to the US when it comes to next-generation DVD adoption.
Research by GfK shows Blu-ray DVD players and movies dominate their HD-DVD alternatives in Australia and represented 95.2 per cent of the market by October. More than 97,700 of the 101,600 high-definition DVD players sold in Australia played Blu-ray DVDs, compared to only 3800 that played HD-DVD discs. Blu-ray is also winning the software war, with consumers buying 87,000 Blu-ray DVDs and only 14,400 HD-DVD discs.
"This report quite clearly depicts the current state of play in the high-definition format market in Australian homes," Sony Australia managing director Carl Rose says. "Across the key areas of high-definition entertainment, from hardware to content, these figures show that Blu-ray is distinctly the format of choice for consumers."
These figures do come at an early stage in the high-definition DVD format war though, according to Sony International vice-president Matt Brown. He says early adopters are still leading the way for this technology and have been restrained by the limited number of next-generation DVD players and movie titles on the market so far.
"This is changing quickly though, and it's at the point now where every time you release a new movie you break a new record for shipments," Mr Brown says.
An important element in this DVD format war is movie studio support. Neither format can win the war without it, as no consumer will buy a next-generation DVD player if it won't play their favourite movies.
Blu-ray has long enjoyed the largest range of studio support (70 per cent), but suffered a blow in August last year when heavyweights Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG agreed to distribute their movies in the HD-DVD format for 18 months.
These studios own movies such as Cloverfield, Bee Movie and Shrek, and their deal led many industry experts to predict the DVD format war would continue until the contract expires.
But HD-DVD also suffered a blow this month when Warner Bros, which controls 20 per cent of the movie market, announced it would no longer support the format and would release only Blu-ray DVDs. The move surprised the industry, including Toshiba, which cancelled a planned HD-DVD event and declared a subsequent press conference "a tough day".
Despite intense competition for DVD format loyalty, Disney worldwide brand marketing executive Gordon Ho says the studio's decision to support Blu-ray was simple.
"For our movies to look really good in high-definition we knew we needed more than a 30GB disc, which is what HD-DVD offers," he says. "Guess what? Today pretty much every one of Disney's movies is released on a 50GB disc. Paramount recently had issues trying to get all of their content on a 30GB HD-DVD disc, and so their packaging listed some features that weren't on the disc. Ultimately we needed that space for the best pictures, the best sound and the interactive features you want to add to a high-definition DVD."
Mr Ho admits other considerations also played a part in Disney's decision, including the added durability of Blu-ray DVDs, its large support base and the lack of Blu-ray DVD piracy (new equipment is needed to produce the discs).
But Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment president Bob Chapek says it is Blu-ray's extra storage and speed that will ultimately transform home movies.
"Blu-ray enables us to break the line between the movie and the movie extra," he says. "Because of the capacity of the disc, plus its processing speed, the world of movies and bonus features becomes one. It becomes one seamless experience where you can make choices on the fly because they're now all on one disc."
As a result, some Blu-ray DVDs will allow you to view "picture-in-picture" movie extras – miniature, behind-the-scenes documentaries that screen in a box in the corner of your television screen. Mr Chapek says many other movie extras are planned for future Disney Blu-ray releases, including interactive games.
Twentieth Century Fox is planning to add interactive elements to its Blu-ray DVD discs. Technology executive vice-president Danny Kaye says it plans to add features such as a world-saving trivia quiz to its Day After Tomorrow and a function that lets you search for scenes by their content (explosions or car chases, for example).
The studio's Die Hard 4.0 Blu-ray title features a game with video instructions and gentle ribbing from actor Kevin Smith, Independence Day will feature an alien scavenger hunt game, and Master And Commander will let you see a map showing the location of the movie's two ships at any point during the film.
Mr Kaye says some future titles will let you transfer a digital copy of the film to your portable media player, be it an iPod or a PlayStation Portable, so you can enjoy it while travelling.
Despite these promising developments, Mr Kaye admits the DVD format war is still "confusing to the consumer" and "a huge problem for the movie industry", as it divides consumers along technology battle lines.
Mr Parsons says the end of the war cannot come soon enough: "(Consumers) are getting sick of this format war... they were sick of this format war when it started."
"If I were to have made a guess about this war a year ago, I would have thought it would be over by now," he says. "I think the Paramount and Dreamworks deals threw a spanner in the works but, regardless, Blu-ray is still on track to win and I believe it will prevail."
Mr Chapek is more optimistic, fuelled by Blu-ray success in Australia and other countries.
"It's probably over now in some countries because of Blu-ray's humungous lead in market share," he says. "It's over already in Australia, in Japan and in Europe. The only place it's even talked about is the US. By this year, sometime during this year, it will be evident that HD-DVD is over."
News AU