Blu-ray VS. HD-DVD: The Return of the Format War

Behind the gates of Hollywood a deeply contentious and surprisingly familiar war has been waged in the last five years. A far cry from the high profile disputes waged over the course of previous months between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, few people care to follow this war's progress or even know of its existence. Rather, the high-definition home video format war between Sony's Blu-ray Disc and Toshiba's HD-DVD has polarized Hollywood, redefining the modern landscape of corporate media and the steps that must be taken to ultimately conquer competition in an elusive and challenging digital age.

The turn of the century established a new age in the digital revolution as millions feared the impending Y2K apocalypse and home video surpassed theatrical receipts for film investors hungry to make excessive monetary gain. Digital Versatile Discs, also commonly known as DVDs, shocked Hollywood by the sheer volume of profit, reestablishing the industry's focus on what had been, since the first home video format war of the 1980s, another way to exploit one's holdings and creative properties. As with television syndication of motion pictures, each film studio and parent media giant found profitable returns on movies within their vaults that had only previously collected dust. Hollywood had discovered that with DVD, a highly profitable product with low overhead, reselling ancillary properties solidified the key to producing a high back end profit of roughly six-billion dollars per fiscal year without the expenses of actually producing a new product. The establishment of DVD as the gold standard for home video eventually put VHS, the more expensive low quality video standard, to rest. As time passed and profits continued, it was inevitable that the film industry would eventually establish a new, higher quality version for the home video make, and needless to say, with it, reissues of movies from the vault once again. The time for a new high-definition home video format was on the horizon and two companies would begin a fight to the death in hopes to own the patents and hardware of the next generation of DVD.

The year 2002 saw the introduction of Sony and Toshiba Corporation's "next-gen" formats which planned to capitalize on high resolution TVs, promising six times the picture resolution of a DVD with up to 8.1 channel surround sound in replacement of 5.1, the previous standard for DVDs. Dubbed HDTVs, these televisions led a cutting edge in establishing home movie theaters as a affordable and consumer friendly means of reliving the movie theater experience from the comfort of one's own living room. Wielding blue lasers to read information at a greater wavelength, thus capable of condensing more information on a single CD sized disc, Sony's Blu-ray Disc and Toshiba's HD-DVD sparked excitement for the film industry and "techno-buffs" around the world, while suggesting that the competition between two media giants could only result in catastrophe for one side unless the two formats could find some way to work together. Others believed that for either format to win, one must prevail and win the support of each of the five major Hollywood studios, for, with each studios support comes a contract to market and sell that studio's library. Ultimately lines were drawn in the sand with Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Columbia, Fox and Disney taking sides with Blu-ray and Universal, Paramount and The Weinstien Company joining HD-DVD. The largest studio of them all, Warner Bros. decided they would hold out and went neutral between the two formats until one showed indisputible promise.

In attempts to work together, HD-DVD and Blu-ray executives met in 2005, attempting to combine aspects of both formats. These negotiations failed to go as smoothly as planned and eventually led to a stalemate with both sides deciding their own format was superior. It was a declaration of war. Some companies attempted to counter this conflict by developing hybrid players that could playback both kinds of discs, but ultimately the cost to develop this and make it affordable to the consumer took more time than expected and fell on the back burner in hopes that one format would prevail early.

In terms of the actual nuts and bolts technology and specifications, the two formats boasted their own strengths and their opponent's weaknesses. Though both formats presented perfect specifications for playing back video at equal 1080p quality and recreate soundtracks perceivably identical to the original film master, Sony's larger 50 gig dual layer discs showed promising storage capacity that suggested limitless possibilities for holding movies or TV shows. Sony invoked this strength as their superiority suggesting people would someday buy entire television series on a single disc or even own multiple cuts of a film, such as the theatrical cut, director's cut and special editions, on a single high-definition disc. In a related statement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer boasted the format's superiority, stating, "I think Blu-ray is just a better format," Stringer said. "Our partners are with Blu-ray Disc because, first of all, we have greater security, which Fox is particularly good at. Disney thinks it's a better picture. And the sheer amount of bandwidth on the disc gives directors and beyond all kinds of future opportunity, including director's cuts and who knows what 3-D capabilities will be down the road."

HD-DVD, on the other hand, while smaller in capacity with a 30 gigabyte dual layer disc was cheaper to produce with a dual decoder, for picture in picture playback, and internet capability as a standard in all players. The release of the Sony Playstation 3 in 2006 helped Sony make it's greatest and most effective move. The Playstation 3, unlike most video game systems has a Blu-ray laser inside and with it the capabilities of serving as a Blu-ray player as well. While costs seemed too high for the common consumer at the time of its release with a price tag of over six-hundred dollars per console, the role of a Playstation in the entertainment hardware market is and has been a substantial one since its introduction in 1994. By Christmas of 2007, while sales were up for the Blu-ray format having cultivated a following in PS3 owners, projections showed that the Blu-ray format had reached the hight of garnering nearly one-billion dollars by 2008. This, along with the high end of sales for Blu-ray, unmatched by HD-DVD, and the lowering price of Blu-ray players led to nearly unbeatable competition for Toshiba's wavering high-def disc.

In the following months the final blow to HD-DVD from Blu-ray was made by way of a exclusivity contract with Warner Bros. and their parent media giant Time Warner. Ultimately, this move with the subsequent modification of future Blu-ray players to match and heighten previously touted HD-DVD capabilities has led most experts to claim Blu-ray the winner.

Needless to say for for anyone interested and well acquainted in modern entertainment business and new media, this technical, corporate, and artistically influencing melee remains both cautionary tale and case study once two important truths are acknowledged. First, this war could have been easily avoided and second, Blu-ray and HD-DVD were never all that different to begin with.

What can ultimately be learned from a study of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war is a valuable expose on what it takes to succeed in Hollywood as the established standard of home video media, and more importantly how modern media conglomerate Sony, architect and proprietor of the Blu-ray format, seems to but has not conclusively won the format war with money, a higher ratio of studio, global and peripheral support and the Trojan horse of home entertainment, the Sony Playstation 3.