Formats

I originally said this on Engadget HD, but it bears repeating:

Warner has seemed to have created a landside of Blu-ray exclusivity announcements in the market lately due to their announcement that they will be dropping the HD-DVD format soon, and I believe this is all about the overall marketing of the high-definition formats.

The truth is that the average consumer is perfectly fine with DVDs, or for that matter, upscaling DVD players. That’s what the industry is finding.

Blu-ray, however, is being successfully perceived to be a videophile format. Like Laserdisc, it’s been received well by the minority of users who are interested in high-definition discs as a new format for movies.

HD-DVD however is not. It is being perceived as an incremental successor to DVD, a resolution and format that many people exceedingly comfortable with right now (see also RoughlyDrafted article on Why Low Def Is The New HD). It also persists the perception of a compatibility issue that doesn’t even really exist — A Blu-ray player can play normal DVDs just as well as an HD-DVD player can play normal DVDs. But the name itself, seems to imply a level of support that just isn’t there. Whenever I’ve been asked about the HD disc, this is one of the very first questions: Can I play HD DVDs on my regular DVD player?

Regarding price, HD-DVD’s strength is that it speaks best to an audience which is still showing complete indifference to the format, since current DVD players offer the best price and best selection. As one clever commenter pointed out, the idea that HD-DVD would win handily over Blu-ray has a lot to do with the perceived victory of VHS over Beta. Back then, there was nothing else to choose from, so whichever format provided the content that everyone wanted was the one that won. However, DVDs are as plentiful as a format can get, and with the right DVD players, still look great on an HD television.

Blu-ray represents a new market, made up of people who don’t care about the old DVD name. HD-DVD is one that is trying to upgrade an existing market, one that is resisting pretty strongly right now. And in the studios’ minds there’s no point in continuing a war between two camps if one of them seems to actually confuse consumers & compete with the healthy DVD format. This way, they can streamline disc manufacturing, have a clearer marketing message for videophiles vs. the average Joe, and can spend that extra energy figuring out this whole “online distribution” thing that is the true DVD format successor.