The Times: Tech column - DVD format wars
By David Rowan
Typical. Just as you finally alphabetise your sprawling DVD collection, along comes another battle over the Next Big Format.
In just seven years, the DVD has transformed home entertainment, with an extraordinary three billion discs so far distributed in North America alone. And how does the industry thank us for tolerating all its horribly incompatible formats? Yes, you've guessed -with more rival systems designed not to work together.
The entertainment industry seems intent on restaging the old VHS v Betamax tug-of-war, with at least three competing technologies seeking to replace your current DVD recorder. Sony is backing one proprietary system, the Blu-ray Disc, along with partners including JVC and Philips. Meanwhile, NEC and Toshiba are backing another, the HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD), while China is developing a third, the Enhanced Versatile Disc.
You might question the need to upgrade, but the industry points to the rapid improvement in television image quality (unlike the programmes). Higher definition pictures require more storage space, and standard discs are already struggling to cope. Today's discs typically store 8.5GB of data on one side -a vast amount a couple of years ago, but peanuts in the era of high-definition TV. The new formats promise at least 15GB: the Blu-ray consortium is even predicting 150GB per disc if data is clustered in a series of layers.
The systems differ in their video-compression codecs and their approaches to copy protection, and the Hollywood studios are, wisely, remaining agnostic at this stage.
Although Japanese consumers can already buy Blu-ray recorders from Sony and Panasonic, it will be at least 18 months before HD-DVD machines go on sale. It is too soon to say which format will dominate, although the Chinese system, designed to bypass western intellectual property restrictions, is unlikely to find its way into Dixons.
Blu-ray may have a first-mover advantage, but Microsoft has pledged that its next-generation PC operating system will be compatible with HD-DVD. Both formats, mercifully, will play today's "old generation" discs.
However, unless the rival consortia can promise that films recorded on one system can be played on the other, you would be wise to sit out the battle. After all, you never know what will be coming next.
Last month, the Optware Corporation, in Japan, said it had developed a "holographic" recording disc with 200 times the storage capacity of a standard DVD. The transparent, CD-sized Holographic Versatile Disc is also said to transfer data at 40 times the speed. It is expected to reach the market in around 18 months, at something like £2,000, just as the HD-DVD competes for your cash.
Is it rational that we constantly upgrade our entertainment devices simply to ensure ever-greater storage? Probably not. Then again, who would have considered the 10,000-song iPod to be a necessity?
Geekdom has reached a momentous landmark. The "Internet", Wired News has solemnly declared, is henceforth to be called the "internet", while the "Web" and the "Net" are to be similarly de-capitalised. The online world is now just "another medium for delivering and receiving information".
"Oh dear, how remarkably po-faced and unnecessary," responds the amused custodian of The Times's linguistic style guide. "We have been lower-case for a good 18 months."
Yet again you read it here first.
(The Times, September 7 2004)
Typical. Just as you finally alphabetise your sprawling DVD collection, along comes another battle over the Next Big Format.
In just seven years, the DVD has transformed home entertainment, with an extraordinary three billion discs so far distributed in North America alone. And how does the industry thank us for tolerating all its horribly incompatible formats? Yes, you've guessed -with more rival systems designed not to work together.
The entertainment industry seems intent on restaging the old VHS v Betamax tug-of-war, with at least three competing technologies seeking to replace your current DVD recorder. Sony is backing one proprietary system, the Blu-ray Disc, along with partners including JVC and Philips. Meanwhile, NEC and Toshiba are backing another, the HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD), while China is developing a third, the Enhanced Versatile Disc.
You might question the need to upgrade, but the industry points to the rapid improvement in television image quality (unlike the programmes). Higher definition pictures require more storage space, and standard discs are already struggling to cope. Today's discs typically store 8.5GB of data on one side -a vast amount a couple of years ago, but peanuts in the era of high-definition TV. The new formats promise at least 15GB: the Blu-ray consortium is even predicting 150GB per disc if data is clustered in a series of layers.
The systems differ in their video-compression codecs and their approaches to copy protection, and the Hollywood studios are, wisely, remaining agnostic at this stage.
Although Japanese consumers can already buy Blu-ray recorders from Sony and Panasonic, it will be at least 18 months before HD-DVD machines go on sale. It is too soon to say which format will dominate, although the Chinese system, designed to bypass western intellectual property restrictions, is unlikely to find its way into Dixons.
Blu-ray may have a first-mover advantage, but Microsoft has pledged that its next-generation PC operating system will be compatible with HD-DVD. Both formats, mercifully, will play today's "old generation" discs.
However, unless the rival consortia can promise that films recorded on one system can be played on the other, you would be wise to sit out the battle. After all, you never know what will be coming next.
Last month, the Optware Corporation, in Japan, said it had developed a "holographic" recording disc with 200 times the storage capacity of a standard DVD. The transparent, CD-sized Holographic Versatile Disc is also said to transfer data at 40 times the speed. It is expected to reach the market in around 18 months, at something like £2,000, just as the HD-DVD competes for your cash.
Is it rational that we constantly upgrade our entertainment devices simply to ensure ever-greater storage? Probably not. Then again, who would have considered the 10,000-song iPod to be a necessity?
Geekdom has reached a momentous landmark. The "Internet", Wired News has solemnly declared, is henceforth to be called the "internet", while the "Web" and the "Net" are to be similarly de-capitalised. The online world is now just "another medium for delivering and receiving information".
"Oh dear, how remarkably po-faced and unnecessary," responds the amused custodian of The Times's linguistic style guide. "We have been lower-case for a good 18 months."
Yet again you read it here first.
(The Times, September 7 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, September 07, 2004
<< Home