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..."We don't need no steenkin' format war" |
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What if they had a format war but nobody showed up? The DVD Guy
I've been following the product announcements about the next-generation DVD players, as I am sure you all have, and I've got to admit that while the anticipation of seeing a new, improved DVD format emerge has got me excited, my enthusiasm has been dampened by the coming format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
It makes me wonder if we're doomed to repeat the whole VHS and Betamax battle every time manufacturers have a difference of opinion about which way to turn in technological developments?
I'm NOT saying that all companies should operate in lock step, because without a healthy amount of competition (stress healthy), industries tend to become complacent. Competition is a healthy little "noodge" that keeps innovators from resting on their laurels, and keeps them innovating. This, kids, is "a good thing".
But when companies lock horns, and dig in their heels, taking a dogmatic approach to technological developments, leaving the consumer mired in the middle of a potentially protracted battle from which there does not appear to be a contender clearly poised for battle, it makes you go "hmmmm...".
What is really being fought for here? Technological superiority? A truly better format for consumers? Bragging rights and a Technical Emmy? Or maybe a less diluted patent royalty stream, and a return to a proprietary format that has less open-market competition, and more "home-court" advantage for the inventor? Does anyone really know, or will those who really know actually tell us? I suspect the latter, and no...
Good bad or indifferent, the compromises that were endured by all parties during the creation of SD DVD would seem to have given us a very enthusiastically received format, full of creative possibilities, and yet open enough to have been embraced by multiples of manufacturers eager to make DVD players, media, and authoring tools. There can be no doubt in my mind that the original DVD spec, while perhaps hobbled a bit by some limitations on its interactivity was, nonetheless, made the better for the compromises and alliances needed to produce one standard format.
Regardless, we have been happily authoring SD DVDs with somtimes incredible levels of interactivity, well within the confined of the original DVD spec.
In addition, the single biggest advantage afforded the CE and computer manufacturers (and the one they may have lost sight of in the last ten years) was that the consumer was offered a single, specific solution to a migration path into digital visual media: DVD.
Not MMCD and/or SD, but DVD: a compromise format that provided a single, definitive standard that the whole industry could support and manufacture for. And so they have, for nigh on ten years.
In the rush to leap into the Next Generation of Optical Discs, many thousands (millions?) of dollars are being expended to win hearts and minds of consumers, many of whom may yet be perfectly content to continue buying or renting SD DVDs.
It's not their fault if the price of DVD players has plummeted to the price that they can be given away like toasters as premiums from opening bank accounts.
Consumers love a bargain, to be sure, but for many years, DVD players sold healthily for $399 or $299 not $99, $79 or $39! Replicated DVD media eventually found a nice price niche of around $20, and everyone was seemingly happy... for a while...
Somehow, the price war for DVD players in recent years caused the retail prices to descend to unheard-of low levels, and is likely the cause of the upside-down revenue figures being reported by the CEA: unit sales of players are growing, but net revenues are plummeting, due to the reduced sales prices.
I'm perfectly happy to have the markerplace reward the innovator of new technology with an appropriate return on their investment – after all, those who take the chances and blaze new trails in technology should be rewarded with the fruits of their labor – these traditionally show up as profits.
But who is going to profit from the Next Generation DVD format war? I can tell you one group I that think is NOT:
Consumers!
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