It has been way too long in coming but a victor in the ongoing battle between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD home video formats has finally been declared. Yesterday, Toshiba formally announced that they would cease production of HD-DVD players and recorders. This action will quickly bring a costly end to the HD-DVD as a consumer product and leave Blu-ray as the undisputed high-definition successor to the popular DVD format.
KUNG FU HUSTLE is one of only a handful of martial arts-related movies currently on Sony’s Blu-ray format, the winner in the next generation format war with HD-DVD.
The decision came after a spat of recent defections by high-profile companies such as Warner Home Video, Netflix and Wal-Mart who all announced plans to carry only Blu-ray products.
The end of HD-DVD has been further influenced by developments in the video gaming market where Sony’s decision to put Blu-ray players in all of its pricey Playstation 3 consoles has begun to pay off in spite of an early lead by Microsoft’s less expensive Xbox 360, which made its competing HD-DVD player optional. This, along with the 360′s 16% hardware failure rate, has already led to a significantly larger number of Blu-ray players sold to support the current crop of early hi-def titles available on the market. According to the Associated Press, Microsoft has sold 300,000 of the optional HD-DVD players compared to the 10.5 million Blu-ray-installed PS3s sold worldwide.
Another factor in Sony’s win is its substantial presence in the film industry through Sony Pictures, in additional to broad support from competing studios. This guaranteed that at the very least, Sony would be able to provide in-house content for its own format.
For those of us around long enough to remember the last major format war, this is quite the upset victory for Sony. They previously emerged on the losing side back in the early 1980s when their Betamax tape format was beat by JVC’s VHS format. With grindhouse movies distribution gradually moving from theaters to television, VHS ended up being the medium of choice for martial arts movie enthusiasts to buy, sell and trade their favorites.
For the last decade, DVD, with its higher resolution, storage capacity, longevity, and interactivity, has been the format of choice for home video consumers. Nothing has changed up to this point, despite the availability of next-generation formats. For the last two years, Blu-ray and HD-DVD have been locked in a fight to determine who would emerge as the successor to DVD in the age of high-definition video. Until recently, neither camp had emerged as the likely winner. This deadlock was undoubtedly taking a toll on home video sales due to confusion and reluctance to buy into either format for fear of betting on a loser. Those who have bought into HD-DVD may be feeling a measure of defeat. Small consolation may come in reduced prices for remaining HD-DVD stock and an opportunity to show off a piece of soon-to-be-forgotten history when they dust off their closeted HD-DVD player for visitors.
With Blu-ray now the winner, the way is clear for studios to begin converting their existing libraries to the new format with greater assurance of return. It also means consumers now know where to put their money as they begin upgrading their home entertainment system. But don’t expect DVD to disappear any time soon. It took nearly five years for DVD to completely replace VHS on store shelves and yet even to this day VHS remains popular as a home video recording format.
There are factors other than a costly, two-year format war that will continue to slow the progress of Blu-ray’s growth. The most obvious factor is cost. Blu-ray players range in price from $400 to $1000, compared with DVD players that can be had for less than $50. Upscaling of DVD technology has improved playback quality on select players and a wide assortment of low-cost DVD recorders and copiers are now available as well. Prices on Blu-ray players should begin to drop as competition heats up between manufacturers. For its added value as a gaming console, the $400 PS3 is currently the best buy on the market for a standard Blu-ray player.
Another issue that will slow Blu-ray growth is the cost of upgrading an existing DVD library to a new format. Collectors, myself included, have bought heavily into DVD which has helped the format to become the hugely profitable industry that it is. With the average suggested retail cost of a single Blu-ray movie hovering around $30 and actual sale prices averaging no less than $25, a big question is whether or not consumers will feel inclined to replace movies they already own on DVD. Simple math shows that buying 100 movies, a fraction of what many collectors own, could easily add up to $3000. That’s a particularly hard sell when buyers are still trying to expand their collections with new or previously unreleased movies. Because DVDs have a much longer shelf life than VHS tapes, many buyers may think twice about replacing them.
Looking at the martial arts genre, there remain thousands of movies that have never been legitimately released on DVD in the U.S. alone. Take the Shaw Brothers library for instance. We’ve seen less than 30 remastered titles put out on region 1 DVD out of 800 currently in Celestial Pictures’ care. A significant number of these are martial arts-related and/or of considerable value to world cinema enthusiasts. Japanese studios like Toei and Toho both have large film archives containing unreleased chambara movies and martial arts and action TV series, many of them never before released in the U.S. There are certain movies that will definitely be worth upgrading, especially should they come with new and improved bonus content. Many genre collectors on a budget are going to have some tough choices to make in the coming years.
Another issue that impacts Asian film collectors is region coding associated with imports. Like DVD, Blu-ray has its own region code system in place to encourage consumers to buy local. For Asian film buffs, this has been a hurdle easily overcome by purchasing an all-region DVD player, hacking region-specific players or using all-region software with DVD-ROM players. It’s unfortunate that Blu-ray even uses region codes but they have at least been simplified. Instead of the eight codes used by DVD, there are only three Blu-ray region codes. “A” is used by North and South America, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and all of Southeast Asia. “B” encompasses Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Oceana. “C” is made up of Eastern Europe, India, Russia and mainland China.
In Hong Kong, movies such as INFERNAL AFFAIRS are already beginning to appear on Blu-ray. Some are region coded and others are not. Details on any available region-free Blu-ray players are not readily available although existing players have already been hacked. It will only be a matter of time before we do start seeing viable region-free options for consumers who are not seeing the international films they want to buy released locally by distributors.
In the U.S. and U.K., films on Blu-ray are still vastly limited in comparison to what is currently available on DVD. Blockbuster titles currently dominate and this will probably continue until enough of the consumer base has shifted to the new format to support the release of niche titles. There is currently little incentive for martial arts movie enthusiasts to upgrade. Amazon lists only 14 martial arts movies available on Blu-ray and most of them, not surprisingly, are from Sony Pictures. With Blu-ray just having been declared the winner, don’t expect to start seeing much until the end of the year when distributors make a rush to get new Blu-ray stock out. Christmas 2008 should see a huge spike in Blu-ray player sales.
Whatever you do, keep your DVD collection and a working player handy. It’s going to be a long time before Blu-ray replaces DVD and my prediction is that it will never happen entirely. I believe that in coming years digital content from cable on-demand services and sites such as Netflix and Amazon will eventually overtake all traditional home video formats as the main distribution method for feature films. By that time, higher-quality discs than what Blu-ray offers and that are already in development will be introduced for storage and uncompressed, theater-grade film viewing. This will largely serve the high-end minority of consumer willing to pay for the best viewing experience available while most of us will settle for the convenience of watching increasingly higher-quality broadband movies available at the push of a button.
For now, I hope Sony enjoys its victory. I’m sure they, along with distributors and retailers alike are breathing a collective sigh of relief as the industry settles down to making the most of the Blu-ray format. They might want to hurry though. With the way that the music industry is desperately struggling to keep up with a realistic distribution model for the online age and with online movie renters and retailers already lining up to become the iTunes of digital movie sales, Blu-ray’s days may already be numbered.
Related Topics:Blu-ray • DVD
- Mike
- David
