Blu-ray and HD DVD: it's games and PCs stupid

Stan Beer
Sunday, 23 April 2006 07:11

Your IT - Home IT

Much has been made of the analogy between VHS  (Toshiba) and Betamax (Sony) and the current war between HD DVD and Blu-ray. However, there is one big difference between now and then. Today we have PCs and games consoles in our homes, most of which also serve  as DVD players.

Dedicated DVD players these days cost a little more than a child's weekly allowance. Who needs them, when you have three or four DVD players sitting in your home on your games console, laptop and desktop PCs?

This whole business about HD DVD players being cheaper at $499 than Blu-ray players at $1000 is utter nonsense. Within two years, regardless of which technology wins out, dedicated players of the new format will once again cost peanuts. Most people will not bother to get one because most people will already have a few players sitting in their other household devices.

And this is the point. Market pundits are making a big song and dance about how Toshiba has struck the first blow with the release of its new $499 HD DVD player.  Excuse us for pointing out the obvious but you will also need to spend a few thousand extra for an HDTV and, of course, once you have all that, you will have the grand choice of four videos to hire - if you can find a Blockbuster which stocks them.

Meanwhile, Toshiba has already released a notebook with an inbuilt HD DVD player, which is actually useful. It's a PC of course; its HD DVD player also plays standard DVDs; and, if HD DVD eventually does win the high definition video war, then you have a ready made player. If not, well you still have a notebook with a DVD player. Fujitsu plans to release a Blu-ray equipped PC in June and the same thing applies.

When Sony finally gets around to releasing it PS3 games console for about $500, that’s when the high definition video wars will really start to take off. Many family homes today use their games console as a DVD player. Microsoft plans to make an add-on HD DVD player available for the Xbox 360 player.

Meanwhile, the word is that the movie industry favours the more advanced Blu-ray technology. However, not many would place their trust in that knowledge. Thus, the wiser heads amongst consumers will ignore the temptation to waste money on a dedicated high definition video player and, instead buy something that will still be useful, whichever technology wins out – a computer or a games console.