(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Developments in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war kicked into high gear in the past couple of months. November and December saw the bulk of the long-delayed HD product lines finally hitting store shelves: Blu-ray players from Sony, Panasonic, and Philips; the PlayStation 3; the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on; and the second-generation Toshiba HD DVD players. In the new year, both camps came out swinging at CES 2007. With so much news to process, we've taken the opportunity to collect all the major developments into one easily digestible chunk.
Enter the combo player: LG officially unveiled the BH100, the first device to play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Despite the caveats--it's $1,200, and the HD DVD functionality lacks that format's HDi interactivity features--this breakthrough player is the first model that's essentially future-proof. High-definition cinephiles will be able to buy movies on either format without fear of backing the wrong horse. The best news? The BH100 is already on store shelves.
...and the combo discs: LG offered hardware détente, while Warner took the software angle. Warner's new Total HD format (THD) puts an HD DVD and a Blu-ray version of the same movie on a single disc, which Warner pledges will sell for the same price as its single-format counterpart. Like the LG, it's a great hedge against the uncertain HD future.
51GB triple-layer HD DVD disc: Size matters, and Blu-ray has long been trumpeting its 50GB dual-layer disc capacity over HD DVD's 30GB. The underdog struck back with news of a 51GB triple-layer prototype. That puts HD DVDs ahead by a nose--at least until Blu-ray's rumored quad-layer 100GB discs hit the streets.
New HD DVD players: To date, only Toshiba's been producing set-top HD DVD players, albeit sometimes relabeled under the RCA brand. Toshiba expanded its second-generation lineup by one--adding the HD-A20, a $600 player that offers 1080p output)--but the company will finally be getting some company. Chinese manufacturers Shinco, Alco, and Lite-On are set to offer more affordable players later in the year, and the more familiar Onkyo and luxury Meridian lines will also be joining the camp.
New Blu-ray players: Samsung announced that its second-generation Blu-ray player, the BD-P1200, will sport cutting-edge HDMI 1.3 output despite costing $800 when it debuts in March; that's a 20 percent discount from the first-generation BD-P1000, which hit stores just a few months ago. Sharp also pledged to release its first Blu-ray player in 2007, while Panasonic, Pioneer, and Philips continued to highlight their recently released first-generation models. Sony, meanwhile, showed off two "Sapphire" Blu-ray prototypes, follow-ups to its brand-new BDP-S1. Of course, the PlayStation 3 remains the most affordable Blu-ray player on the market, with none of the players announced at CES 2007 beating the $500 and $600 price points of the two PS3 models.
Sales figures--who's winning? Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are fledgling formats, but that doesn't stop each camp from bragging that they've already left the other in the dust. While the numbers should be taken with a huge grain of salt, it appears that the two game consoles seem to be leading the charge for HD movies: Microsoft is said to have sold about 100,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD peripherals. Meanwhile, almost 700,000 U.S. consumers have picked up Sony's Blu-ray-capable PlayStation 3. HD DVDs total install base stands at just 175,000 (including, presumably, those Xbox 360 drives), though the camp has pledged to ship 2.5 million players by the end of the year (1.8 million of them from Toshiba).
It's all about the content: Hardware's all fine and good, but these formats will live and die based on the available content. To that end, Team Blu-ray looks to be ramping up in 2007 after a slow start. Disney, Fox, and Sony Pictures announced a slew of titles that won't be available on HD DVD, while Paramount and Warner will be releasing HD versions of fan favorites--including Blade Runner and the Matrix and Harry Potter films--in both formats. Universal remains the lone major studio that's exclusively publishing on HD DVD. It's little surprise, then, that the total number of Blu-ray titles (currently around 150) will soon begin to surpass the available HD DVD catalog. In other words, the burden is on HD DVD to continue to offer compelling content in light of the forthcoming deluge of Blu-ray movies.
The porn factor: There was a lot of ink on the fact that the adult industry has chosen HD DVD over Blu-ray. It turns out that Blu-ray isn't totally giving porn the cold shoulder, but the industry does appear to be backing the easier-to-produce HD DVD format instead. As Bill Hunt points out at The Digital Bits, the analogy with VHS and Beta isn't likely to hold up here (the appearance of adult movies on VHS was said to be a key factor in that format's eventual victory over porn-free Beta): With digitized smut readily available online, the adult industry's apparent preference for HD DVD isn't the slam dunk that some are painting it to be.
Cracked security: HD DVD and Blu-ray were both supposed to include military-grade encryption that would keep the HD content safe from pirates. Apparently, however, it's taken hackers less than a year to crack open the AACS protection found on both formats, resulting in HD copies of Serenity appearing on BitTorrent within days. Now come rumors that Blu-ray--despite having an extra level of copy-protection--is ripe for the plundering as well. If true, it could mean that both formats could amp up their guard, activating heretofore dormant security measures such as the image constraint token (lower resolution via component video).
A plague on both their houses? Perhaps the biggest issue still facing HD DVD and Blu-ray is the fact that neither could win. After years of false promises, so-called digital delivery is finally becoming a reality. Industry heavy hitters Microsoft (Xbox 360 Video Marketplace) and Apple (iTunes Store) are already offering movies and TV shows in DVD and true HD quality, and the online options will only multiply as broadband bandwidth continues to expand. While they face a variety of their own challenges and shortfalls (restrictive digital rights management, rental versus "ownership" pricing models), such services seem to be the wave of the future, especially with devices like the Xbox 360 and the forthcoming Apple TV making it easy to watch the content on the big screen instead of a computer.
And that, in a nutshell, is the status of the Great HD Format War--just 17 days into 2007.
Samsung BD-P1200
(Credit: Samsung)Samsung was the first to roll out a Blu-ray player last year, and now they're the first company to roll out a standard form-factor player with HDMI 1.3. The new BD-P1200 offers many of the same features as last year's BD-P1000: 1080p playback; DVD upconversion to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p; and a stylish design. The BD-P1200's HDMI output is also compatible with the consumer electronics control (CEC) format, which should enable compatible products to send commands between each other--for instance, a CEC-compatible TV could send commands to the BD-P1200 and tell it to turn on and start playing a disc.
HDMI 1.3 is definitely the main selling point, and it should allow for encoded Dolby Digital TrueHD and DTS HD Master soundtracks to be sent to a compatible receiver--such as the cutting-edge Sherwood Newcastle R-972 and R-872 we saw at CES. We emphasize should because there's a lot of confusion over next-gen high resolution soundtracks--we've contacted both manufacturers as well as Dolby and DTS several times and received conflicting reports about the audio capabilities of several Blu-ray and HD-DVD players.
Samsung says the BD-P1200 will sell for $800 and will be released in March. Anyone in the market for a Blu-ray player should remember that the PS3--if you can find it--can be bought for $500, and that LG's Super Multi Blue Player will get you both Blu-ray and HD-DVD compatibility for $400 more ($1,200) than the Samsung costs.
As reported last week, Warner Brothers announced yesterday at CES its introduction of a new disc format that will contain both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the same movie, so it would work with either type of player. Warner calls the new format Total HD.
The studio fleshed out a few more details at the press conference. It announced that major retailers Best Buy and Circuit City, along with online retailer Amazon, will stock the discs when they appear in the second half of this year. It also specified, according to Reuters, that the discs could be either single- or double-sided, and that Total HD discs would not cost more than standard Blu-ray or HD DVD discs in stores.
Warner is making the move after it became apparent that neither Blu-ray nor HD DVD is taking off all that quickly and that neither format seems to be on the verge of gaining the upper hand, even with the release of Sony's PS3, which has a built-in Blu-ray player. In other words, the company expects a long and protracted war, and I assume the overall cost to market a single disc rather than two separate packages of the same movie will be significantly cheaper. It also will help save precious shelf space in stores (eventually).
Warner's planning a supermerger.
Currently, only Warner and Paramount are putting out movies in both formats. Universal has sided exclusively with HD DVD, while Sony, MGM, 20th Century Fox, and Disney are all exclusively Blu-Ray.
In other CES format war news, LG announced a player that can handle discs from both formats. All I can say is that the whole thing is stupid, and I don't plan on buying either format any time soon, especially when I can easily click on a pull-down menu in my Netflix account and rent whatever movies are available in HD DVD or Blu-ray.
(Credit:
LG)
At a press conference today at CES 2007, LG introduced the first player capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. The words on the drawer of the player read "Super Multi Blue Player," but the model number is simply BH100. The player will be available as early as the first week of February at Best Buy and Circuit City among other outlets, according to the company, and will cost $1,199. At least for now, this announcement appears to be the most significant news at the show.
In case there was any doubt of the unit's capability, the company's press event included a demo of one player showing a custom demo loop labeled with a Blu-ray watermark and a second player showing the same loop with an HD DVD watermark. The company's reps even bravely performed a live demo of playing first an HD DVD disc and then a Blu-ray disc, skipping chapters, and so on. At one point in the conference, the LG representative changed discs, which took about a minute, although the spokesperson claimed a short, 25-second load time.
The player can deliver up to 1080p output resolution at 24 and 30 frames per second via HDMI, but future-conscious buyers might lament that the HDMI version is just 1.2, not 1.3. The LG also has Blu-ray Java compatibility. All of the standard A/V outputs are present, including 5.1-channel analog audio outputs. The spec sheet also mentions all of the requisite audio formats, including the lossless Dolby Digital True HD and DTS-HD formats, implying that the player decodes those formats internally and can send them out via HDMI in PCM format and via the analog 5.1-channel outputs. The unit can also play DVDs but not CDs. The back panel of the demo unit we saw did have an Ethernet port labeled "LAN," which I assume allows at least firmware updates and possibly some interactive features. Update: LG has confirmed that the BH100 also lacks the ability to access the HDi interactive layer found on some HD DVD discs, meaning that their advanced interactive features, like picture-in-picture commentaries and bookmark sharing, won't be available. LG also said that it could not add HDi via a firmware upgrade.
I was skeptical at first of the company's ability to deliver a player, but this demo and the early release date appear perfectly legit. The release of LG's player opens the door to other companies marketing a combination player (Samsung?), finally bringing some sense of security to buyers interested in investing in next-generation DVD discs. Of course the price of the BH100 is out of reach for most buyers, but if the falling prices of DVD players are any indication, their successor players might become somewhat affordable in a couple years. Of course, we're looking forward to reviewing a BH100 as soon as possible.
The company also introduced a $1,199 computer drive, model GGW-H10N and available around the same time, capable of playing HD DVDs and playing and recording Blu-ray discs at up to 4x speed. It can also read and write DVDs and CDs.
Last night LG said it would release a combination Blu-ray/HD DVD player in early 2007. The news comes with no other details, but I expect the company to divulge a bit more information, perhaps including a mocked-up image or even a physical box of some kind, at the company's press conference, scheduled for 8 a.m. PT this Sunday at CES. Until then we're in the dark as regarding questions such as "When exactly?" "How much?" and "Is this for real?"
LG has made a similar announcement before, so I'll believe in this player when I see it. That said, a combination player would be a huge step toward calling a truce in the format war, and there's no doubt that both Blu-ray and HD DVD could use a popularity boost. This announcement also makes the purchase of a stand-alone Blu-ray player (PlayStation 3 notwithstanding) or HD DVD player seem even more premature than it did already. If you can buy a player that will handle both formats, you'll be able to actually purchase movies you want and not have to worry about whether they'll work with your player. If LG's and other combo players hit the market soon and prices tumble at their usual rates, average HDTV owners might actually want to consider buying the hardware and discs.
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