DVD against a worthy rival

The news is out. Following two years of concentrated lobbying, taught competition and quasi-general consumer uncertainty, Blu-ray was established as the winning high-definition DVD format.

Those who want can start mourning for its rival, HD DVD as Toshiba announced they would stop manufacturing HD DVD players, and would leave the market by the end of this month. As we “speak” HD DVD players and discs are already taken out from stores, and some consumers who have so far supported this technology are rushing to get rid of it through internet auction sites.

What will the future now reserve for movies? Shall we expect Blu-ray DVD players sales to boost? Will this be the end of the consumer confusion? Are Blu-ray DVD player owners sitting comfortable?

Though Toshiba leaves the scene it predicts that internet movie downloads will finally take over the Blu-ray format.

As quoted by The Courier-Mail media analyst Steve Allen sees that as "inevitable" and bound to happen within the next five years.

The dispute over the future of films goes back in 2006 when the high-definition format war burst out. Toshiba put out on the market HD DVD players in March and the rivalry with the Blu-ray DVD format supported by Sony was set off at once.

Both technologies provided considerable improvement over the conventional DVDs, most worth mentioning pictures with five times the resolution, making scenes look sharp and faces more detailed. Moreover, both formats offered better sound, more film extras and better in-movie menus, thus getting the attention of home cinema buffs.

However, there were some differences between the formats that finally declared a winner. HD DVDs did not have region coding and the discs were cheaper in terms of manufacturing, while Blu-ray DVDs offered a larger capacity and proved to be more complicated for movie pirates to fabricate.

Eventually, HD DVD had to face its defeat when most of the movie studios gave their support to the Blu-ray format.

Toshiba Australian general manager Mark Whittard declared they will invest on further developing the internet-based movie market rather than back the Blu-ray DVD format.

The question emerges – how far away are we actually from shifting from a walk to the video store to the click for our favourite movies via the internet? According to analyst Steve Allen it will only take the internet-based movie market a few years till it establishes
its ground well – "If you make them available at the right speed, quality and price it would be a success and would dramatically cut movie piracy. This, of course, would mean you could play them on a television and that you only had a limited licence (to screen the movie) for X number of days."