An unexpected new twist in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD showdown?

 

 

Though we think that both HD formats will be around for a long while, the recent Blu-ray Festival in Hollywood we attended may have initially seemed like an event to talk about one format over another, but it turned out to be much more as the companies involved had more surprises that any of the guest attendees could have imagined.

 

Originally, the split between two formats was like Beta battling VHS and has been treated as such, but this one has become more complicated.  There is the diehard DVD-Video crowd who like the 12” LaserDisc crowd before stick by the format to the end and admirably so.  They are the adamant supporters of the new HD-DVD format, which at its best delivers fine 1080p lines of picture definition, has fine menus and can also contain extras more interactive than ever and the newest state of the art sound for film.  Blu-ray offers the same kind of performance, though it works differently and in incompatible.  So what could have changed?

 

Besides the usual gatherings, speeches, showings of hardware & software and discussion of statistics, the Blu-ray group decided to add actions to words with two impressive presentations that just got better and better.

 

The first had to do with menus, something many have criticized Blu-ray for as being inferior to long-existing technology (even in its latest form) supplied by Microsoft.  For us, we are most concerned with picture & sound, then extras and their accuracy, but a new format should have ease of use and be as consumer friendly as possible.  To this end, the new Blu-ray menus have become like bibliography, dictionary, index and thesaurus and their ambitions to cross-reference everything in every way shape and form for the main program’s content and taken picture in picture to new levels.  You will be hearing much more about BD-J (Blu-ray Disc Java) in the coming months.  There is also an Audio Mixing function you can use on soundtracks that you can have fun with or use to study multi-channel sound design.

 

The sneak preview titles included upcoming films like Live Free Or Die Hard, Independence Day, I, Robot, Master & Commander and the underrated Danny Boyle Science Fiction thriller Sunshine.  Separately at one of the events, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was also being shown off.  These high-profile titles will have fans happy and are smartly-chosen showcases for the latest interactivity, but even more than that, it is about treating the films with class long after Criterion began such treatment decades ago with the 1933 King Kong.  With menus and feature like this, all the studios supporting the format will have to be as ambitious as Criterion and the smarter they are using these new value-added avenues, the more people will follow their love of film.

 

Even more significant was the presentation by worldwide electronics giant Panasonic, who after years of competing with Sony, has teamed up with them on Blu-ray.  The fruits of that partnership were on display to the world press in several ways at their offices when they showed off a new chain of home video HD hardware, software and the superior performance the new line yielded was nothing short of breathtaking.

 

For starters, there is a new camcorder line that eliminates both discs and tapes, using a new advanced square chip the size of a 25-cent U.S. quarter coin called the HD SD Memory Card, which at its best can record 40 minutes of 1080i HD and 5.1 digital sound with it.  The playback was amazing and larger chips are available, including possibly 1080p performance.

 

Furthermore, with the new Panasonic DMP-BD30 (replacing the BD10 model) model Blu-ray player, you can plug those chips into the front of the machine and watch what you shot.

 

Then there is the DMP-BD30 itself, which may be the most advanced machine on the consumer market (rivaled only by Pioneer Elite’s more expensive line) with so many performance upgrades that in comparison to previous Blu-ray machine playback (and we have seen many of the machines produced in action to date) look like what many might have reasonably expected 2,000-line progressive scan HD to look.  Detail was improved from the same Blu-ray discs (like Chicken Little, still one of the best around) from previous players we had seen it on, but this was pure 1080p and the purest yet.  No red hitting a “maroon wall” and other imperfections that were just accepted as HD flaws were lessened or gone.

 

The older 3:2 pull down progressive scan approach has been replaced by 1080/24p playback, closer to what only top professional HD studios have to offer.  A diagonally split-screen (one for the master tape, one for Blu-ray from lower-left-to-upper-right corner) fooled some smart people, so close was the performance.  And this is just what Panasonic decided to show.  The advancement of their P4HD approach with this produces an HD image that imitates a kind of layering and weaving only previously associated with film, resulting in amazing performance anyone can see differs from the best DVDs around.  Who knows what kind of HD is in progress secretly from the Panasonic labs next?

 

After seeing all this, it left just about all previous Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback behind, but is exclusive only to Blu-ray.  Panasonic is co-developing Blu-ray with Sony, Phillips and Pioneer, so the other generations of machines from all should follow behind, so where does that leave HD-DVD?

 

We like both formats and once again want to reiterate that this is all about software in the end, no matter how good the players are.  At this point, there is plenty of high quality, stunning software title releases in both formats.  For a while as standard DVD-Video holds out, any good HD playback from either format will look better if set up correctly.  But at this point, Blu-ray has now proved that they have the software/hardware combo superior to HD-DVD.

 

As a result, either Blu-ray will eliminate HD-DVD or it will become the Rolls Royce format, while HD-DVD will have to settle for being a good Cadillac at best when it comes to picture if a player as advanced does not arrive soon.  If the latter happens, it will be a cheaper format for the masses who cannot afford the more expensive Blu-ray machines.  In both cases, however, machines will continue to drop in price, while used software and even hardware will continue to show up as new machines succeed the old.

 

Magic of the DVD name did not help the high definition audio format DVD-Audio (with a capital ‘A’) format replace the Compact Disc or beat Super Audio CD, which did not replace CDs either, but beat DVD-A (as it is also known) as the audiophile format of choice.  Both of them (reviewed extensively on this site) also had good titles and bad, with Universal Music (the only company to do so) issuing some albums in both formats.  Though DVD-A could hold some extras, its high definition MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) format (a predecessor of Dolby Digital that could do 192 kHz/24bit 2.0 and 96/24 5.1) was no match for SACD’s giant single megabit DSD (Direct Stream Digital) format.  Luckily for HD-DVD, it does not have any obvious inferiority in audio or video playback, so it is the players that will now count more than ever.

 

Toshiba and Microsoft (to support their rival X-BOX 360 over Sony’s Playstation 3) have every reason to support HD-DVD and with the tons of royalty money Toshiba gained with regular DVD, can you blame them for not letting go?  If I were in their position, I would probably stand my company in the way of the others too.

 

The ad campaigns have pushed the DVD connection, but like DVD-Audio, maybe using the DVD lettering is confusing to some.  Blu-ray is a new, fresh name, but still does not make sense to most people because they do not know about it yet.  That is all about to change.

 

The Holiday 2007 season is going to be one for the books no matter what happens and any format war will benefit the consumers who understand what is going on.  That an HD picture on a five-inch disc is possible was unthinkable seven years ago, as it was with DVD (and failed formats like CD-I and SVCD (Super Video CD) that were 5-inch attempts to replace VHS and 12” LaserDiscs) a dozen years ago, but these advances are what make home theater, computer software and electronics an exciting field, especially when top rate film and music material is the software at issue.

 

As you read this, an older (but not the oldest, clunkiest, oversized models) Toshiba HD-DVD player went on sale for $100, unthinkable only a few months ago.  We’ll see what consumer experience was like on that offer and if it is repeated, see if any machines may have been held back by (a) certain chain(s) making the offer or not so they would have more or a later sale.

 

A few things are for certain.  DVD is now the CD of our time (leaving CD as old as 12” LaserDisc at this point where technical advances are concerned) in its commonness and ability to impress subsumed by better formats, people want better picture quality no matter what is said about downloads (the assumption of tolerating poor quality did not lead most to keep their VHS collections) and HD is about to make a landing the least informed/interested will notice.

 

One phrase we can carry over from analog TV and even the old radio drama days will continue to apply to this situation:  Stay Tuned!

 

 

 

This is the November 2007 homepage letter.