Business Week report that Blu-Ray may have the upper hand in its battle with HD-DVD (Next-Gen DVDs: Advantage, Sony):
It’s a fight with more plot twists and intrigue than a Hollywood thriller. For two years now, rival camps have been battling over which new DVD format will prevail: Blu-ray, which is backed by Sony and a consortium of 170 other companies, or HD DVD, which is being championed by Toshiba, Microsoft, and others. Both technologies promise crisper video that looks better on the new generation of flat-panel, high-definition TVs. And the winner stands to control a lucrative new market worth billions. Each side has been competing to win the backing of the major movie studios. Only Warner Bros., which currently uses both formats, is still playing hard to get.
I hope this is all irrelevant. I don’t want to pay HK$250 for a DVD, even if it’s high-definition.
Why not?
Well, firstly because DVDs are so annoying. I don’t want fancy menus or stupid extras. I don’t need a large box that takes up space. I just want to watch the film or the TV show.
Secondly because I am paying for the packaging, the distribution costs, and the effort involved in making it look fancy. If you deduct those extra costs and the retail mark-up you must be left with less than 30% of what the consumer pays. So they could charge us HK$75 to download the film and still make a good profit. Divx seems ideally suited for this purpose.
Most modern DVD players can play the Divx format. It supports high-definition, and a feature film easily fits on a DVD – though that seems like an interim solution, and it makes more sense to download direct to a hard disk and play it from there.
So, rather than wasting money on a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player you can buy a device that could be linked directly to a home network so that you can play DVDs, music and downloaded films on your TV, as well as recording TV to watch later. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
Yes, I know that the movie studios will have to overcome their irrational belief in DRM, but it’ll happen before too long. They have no choice.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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