Toshiba launching Blu-ray player by year’s end

It looks like Toshiba might finally be throwing in the towel on HD-DVD.

Reports from Japan indicate that Toshiba will be launching it’s own line of Blu-Ray players later this year.

One Problem With Electronic Delivery

The rallying cry from many is that the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war was pointless because we’ll all be getting our media delivered over the wire very soon anyway.

I have no doubt that will be true eventually, the real question is when.

In the mean time there are some significant problems to overcome with electronic delivery.

In a recent article in Slate, the author compares using desktop computing applications to software-as-a-service web-based applications.  The problems he runs into are pretty much the same ones you would run into with electronic delivery of video or other media.

For the time being, physical media still offers significant advantages in many areas.  There are certainly projects and applications where electronic delivery is a better choice, but it’s going to be a while before it’s the right choice for most situations.

Circuit City Extends HD DVD Return Time

If you recently purchased an HD-DVD player and are now regretting your decision, Circuit City has good news for you.

The chain is extending their return time on HD-DVD players from the normal 30 days to 90 days.

The Format War Is Over, Blu-Ray Wins!

Toshiba announced this morning that:

[I]t will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

So that’s it, after years of fighting, untold sums of money and strong consumer apathy, the HD format war is over. Toshiba also said they have no plans to support Blu-Ray, but will continue to support the existing HD-DVD players.

The end came swiftly for HD-DVD with the recent defection of several big-name retailers and distributors.

I’m sure there will be plenty of speculation about whether the “best” format won or not. In the end, they were actually pretty similar in quality and functionality and it was only because of the stubbornness and egos of the participants that a compromise couldn’t be reached in the early stages of this battle.

This battle was a major factor in the slow adoption of HD. Consumers were afraid of making the wrong choice, and neither format was mature enough to offer all it promised; so they did nothing. Hopefully this will finally get reluctant consumers off the fence and purchasing Blu-Ray players, which will encourage studios and other content producers to ramp-up their creation and production of all types of HD content.

It would also be great if the Blu-Ray camp now worked hard on getting their players to be fully compatible and support all the features and functions they promoted the format with.

Netflix picks Blu-ray

The death knell for HD-DVD continues as Netflix decides to no longer stock HD-DVD and only stock Blu-Ray discs.

How many more defectors will it take before the HD-DVD organization throws in the towel?

Sonic Solutions To Support Only Blu-Ray

Sonic Solutions announced today that they are dropping support for HD-DVD and going forward will support ONLY Blu-Ray authoring.

Sonic Solutions, the leader in digital media software, today announced that its Professional Products Group will focus its research and development resources on the creation of new applications for cutting-edge authoring of Blu-ray Disc titles that encompass the interactive and connected-content capabilities of BD-Live. The group will also increase resource allocation on developing its encoding and title creation applications that streamline the process of preparing video entertainment for digital distribution. In order to address these emerging market opportunities and optimize investment return, the Professional Products Group will conclude sales of its Scenarist® HD DVD authoring product line.

Combined with the Warner Blu-Ray announcement, this may be the final nail in the coffin of HD-DVD.

Regardless of what the public wants, it’s hard to encourage people to choose a format where there are few tools available to create content.

The Format War Continues

As you probably know, some manufacturers and retailers of HD-DVD players recently lowered the price of their hardware dramatically. This has reignited the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war.

Blu-ray Disc Association director Bill Sheppard recently spoke with Fortune/CNN about what the Blu-Ray camp is doing in response.

You can also watch/listen to the interviews directly here and here.

HD DVD Outpacing All Next-Gen Formats in Sales Growth

I would certainly take this with a very large grain of salt, but the HD-DVD promotional group announced,

overall HD DVD hardware sales were up 37 percent from Q1 to Q2 2007, while software sales experienced a 20 percent increase in growth. … During the same time-frame, overall Blu-ray hardware sales saw a 27 percent decline from Q1 to Q2, and Blu-ray software sales were down 5 percent.

Read the full press release.

Manufacturer’s Reps Reporting Little Interest in Blu-ray, HD DVD

CD Pro magazine has an article reporting that high-end installers are seeing little interest from their clients in either high definition disc format.

They offer several reasons for this, including lack of content and little really high-end hardware.

Both of those are valid issues, but it does seem that if you have laid out the money for a custom install, that dropping less than a grand on a high definition player, that might or might not be the “winning” format, isn’t that big a risk.

AACS Encryption Key Released

The current buzz is the release of the AACS encryption key from the software DVD player WinDVD.
Knowing the key would allow you to decrypt any High Definition content so you could make a “backup”, transfer the content to another format and/or device, or, obviously, pirate it.

This is just part of the ongoing game of cat and mouse. The key will be revoked, current WinDVD users will need to upgrade and we’ll be right back where we started. Dealing with software players is one thing. The whole thing gets much more interesting if a hardware player’s keys were obtained. Can you imagine if the keys to the PlayStation 3 were released?

Obviously, a majority of the people who are clamoring for DRM-free content want it for non-legitimate purposes, but there needs to be some solution here because right now everyone is losing. Consumers are losing because they are not being offered content they would pay for, and content providers are losing because consumers are rampantly pirating their content since material they would pay for is not legally available.

Clearly something needs to be done about all this. Content providers are not allowing consumers to use the content in reasonable ways and consumers are not respecting the property rights of the content providers. If the content providers would include (for example) a DRM-protected, iPod formatted version of the movie on the DVD, consumers wouldn’t need to rip the disc or download one so they could watch the film on a second device for their legitimate personal use.