I’ve got a new article up at The American about the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight:
The two camps, each desperate to avoid Betamax’s fate, held dueling press conferences. The more bullish of the two was the Blu-Ray camp, which declared its “victory as the premiere high definition DVD format of choice,” touting broad support from both Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry. But backers of HD-DVD were unbowed, announcing plans for hundreds of new titles in the next year.
Predicting the winner of this battle has become a popular pastime among technology pundits. But there’s a real risk that the combination of consumer confusion and the rapid improvement of Internet-based distribution technologies will doom both formats to niche status.
This article doesn’t have too much of a policy angle to it. When I started on the article, I had planned to discuss the various irritations created by digital rights management restrictions, but I concluded that although those are likely to annoy consumers, they probably won’t be the deciding factor in the success or failure of the formats. The HDCP format gives the movie publisher the right to decide which restrictions on playback will apply to each movie. In theory, a studio can disallow playback entirely on devices that don’t meet HDCP standards. But given that there are thousands of HDTVs out there that were sold before the HDCP standard was finalized, my guess is that they’ll never turn that “feature” on. Hollywood may shoot itself in the foot from time to time, but I doubt they’re so suicidal as to cripple one of their most lucrative revenue streams.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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