The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
For those who came in late, HD DVD and Blu-ray are two competing next generation formats to display movies in HD quality on HD capable TVs. The fact there are two formats is a stark reminder of the crazy VHS and Beta situation of over 20 years ago.
It’s easy to imagine people buying the wrong disc for their player – people coming home with a Blu-ray disc for their HD DVD player, or receiving an HD movie as a gift – only to discover it’s the wrong format.
The movie studio representatives agreed this could be a problem, and Castel, the distributor, indicated they had been training their customer support staff to handle these kinds of enquiries. They also explained that they are putting a lot of effort and energy into educating retailers so they guide consumers into making the right choices at the point of purchase.
HD DVD has the support of Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal Pictures, while Blu-ray has the support of Sony, MGM, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros and Paramount, with Universal the only Blu-ray holdout.
To ease the pain of having to spend lots of money buying HD DVD discs, a partnership with an Australian DVD rental website, Quickflix.com.au, is being negotiated. This will see consumers being able to rent unlimited HD DVD discs for $5 a month after buying a Toshiba HD DVD player, although with the tiny current selection of titles, you could find yourself in month 2 with nothing new to watch.
A HD DVD recorder from Toshiba is already available in Japan, but won’t see an Australian launch until around mid 2007.
So c’mon, movie studios, you need to really ramp up the releases to give us all a reason to buy an HD DVD player. Especially if we can’t record TV in HD quality because a recorder is not yet available, there just needs to be a wider movie selection. We know it’s coming, but it’s the whole chicken and egg thing at work.
If only Sony and Toshiba had managed to agree on a single standard. But then, when was life ever simple and sweet when it comes to technology? But let’s be thankful: the era of HD is here at last.
David Bass
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