The After-Action Report: Responses to the End of the HD Format Wars

Over the last few weeks, blogs and news sites have been reporting on the loss of industry support for HD-DVD. Such a change is quite stunning, as the so-called format war had been raging on for quite a while, and the victory for Blu-ray was rather immediate. But, nevertheless, it did happen.
The format war had reached a sort of stalemate a few months ago, with some companies releasing their films in HD-DVD format, and others in Blu-Ray. This left consumers with a difficult decision, as most of today's moviegoers do not go to see a movie based on what studio releases them. Even now, some excellent films remain only on HD-DVD format (Children of Men, Transformers). But the move that started the downfall was made by Time Warner. Time Warner used to release films on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but then decided in January to back Blu-Ray exclusively. Once this happened, a variety of stores decided to withdraw support for the HD-DVD format, including America's largest DVD seller, Wal-Mart. It's unclear whether their decision was based on Time Warner's, but it largely doesn't matter - the end result is that Toshiba, the maker of HD-DVDs itself, is planning to stop making HD-DVDs, making Blu-Ray the undisputed winner.
Since this occasion marked a large change in both the film and tech industry, the blogosphere at large had quite a bit to say about it. So, instead of chiming in with my own post about it, I chose to reply to posts online, responding to views on both the cause of HD-DVD's demise, and the future of Blu-Ray. The first post I replied to is by Rob Enderle, an analyst and leader of the Enderle Group, a tech analysis firm. He also sits on advisory boards for companies such as Dell, Toshiba and HP, and is a regular writer on Digital Trends via his Talk Backs blog. He analyzed the reasons why HD-DVD failed. The second is by Paul Glazowski by way of Mashable, a social networking news site. Glazowski regularly writes for Mashable, and has written for Profy.com as well. His article claims that Blu-Ray's victory, while momentous, will amount to little when faced with the future of digital downloads. For ease of access, the responses are posted below.

"How Blu-Ray won the Fight and Why it Probably Won't Matter"
Comment:
quite enjoyed your post on the format wars. Yours was one of the few I found that analyzed the demise of HD-DVD, instead of solely forecasting the future. I especially liked your argument about the Nintendo Wii. As much as insiders and tech aficionados may not want to believe it, what drives sales is the average consumer, generally clueless but looking for a good buy. Sony's brightest idea was using the average consumers in the video game market as a fulcrum for Blu-Ray sales. The average consumer is generally unsure of which direction to go (especially in a format war), so when they saw one item bundled with a complete game console, the advantage was obvious.
In fact, I would argue that the real clincher in the format war was definitely the PS3, because it had the lowest barrier to entry. If you looked at either format, you had steep requirements to get anything out of it - an HDTV, an HDMI cable, and the unit itself. Two of those units costed at least 800 to a thousand dollars. For any average consumer, the price was ridiculous. However, the PS3 doubled as a game console, and one which had multitudes of fans. They may not have had an HDTV, but it was okay, because the blu-ray player they were using also happened to be enjoyable without an HDTV, because of the gaming ability. Right there, one of the barriers to entry was lowered. Obviously, to get the full experience, upgrading to an HDTV was necessary, but not immediately. The Playstation 3 was also the cheapest blu-ray player around (much cheaper than a good HDTV), so it had a definite advantage.
Sony, of course, used this to its full advantage. It always touted the number of players, claiming it had its format in a million and a half homes. Of course, 1.4 million of those were PS3s. ( http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/06/20/ps...
And while the North American adoption of the ps3 may not have been huge, it was rather large in Europe and Japan, where the rival Xbox 360 was unpopular, and where the Wii was nowhere to be found, as you stated.
In fact, it this could be best illustrated by looking at the shifting allegiances of a very lucrative industry: Adult videos. Say what you want about the adult industry, it is a perfect litmus test for a format. In the beginning, Blu-Ray tried to adopt a family-friendly stance, and banned pornography from its film repertoire. The porn industry responded by going to HD-DVD. However, companies were bombarded with requests for HD adult content on the shiny new Blu-Ray player that they got when they bought their PS3. Since there was such a market for Blu-Ray pornography, and since Sony desperately needed a way to pull ahead of HD-DVD, a compromise was found, and adult films were made in Blu-Ray HD. The point here is that once an industry which cares very little about the technical advantage of HD media decides to adopt a format, it has become desired by the mainstream. And, since Sony had spent an arm and a leg getting Blu-Ray players into the PS3s and into homes, the momentum for mainstream demand rested solely in the camp of Blu-Ray. ( http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/0... I think that, while Time Warner's decision may have capitulated the change, the real underlying reason that the format war was won by Blu-Ray rested solely in the lowest barrier of entry that the PS3 represented.

"Blu-Ray Wins HD Disc Format Battle; Will Lose War to Downloads"
Comment:

Your article on the future of Blu-Ray is informative and well-researched. Respectfully, however, I would have to disagree.

Digital downloads for movies simply will not enjoy the prominence that music downloads have. Simply put, the time and space requirements for full length films (and especially HD-level films) are just too much to be convenient. I am writing from a computer on a fast university internet connection, and I recently downloaded a 2GB demo of a computer game. The download took me 2 hours. A Blu-Ray disk is a 25 or 50GB download. I understand the idea of streaming as one downloads, but at such a size, the film could not possibly be streamed without an hour-long buffer beforehand. Added to that, even at 25GB per movie, a program box would have to have a 500 GB hard drive to even allow for enough movies to rival a small library of discs. If movie companies want to foster ease of purchasing, it would be way too counterproductive to have the user always deleting movies to make space for new ones, especially if, like iTunes, the user could not download them again. Even if they could, the time needed to download 25GB all over again would be quite annoying, especially when compared to the ease of popping in a disc into a player.
Let's not forget about DRM and the fact that one would not be able to "bring" the movie to a friend's house to watch it (few, if any, DRM'ed media outlets allow for transferability between machines. See the Xbox Live service, for instance). Despite the best of the RIAA's intentions, an official disk will still play in any player that reads the format.
Finally, one has to question, as a commenter has above, the difference between future downloads and Pay-Per-View. PPV already has HD broadcasts of movies in its repertoire, and that hasn't stopped people from renting or purchasing discs of the movie. If they are any indication, digital downloads will at best just be treated like PPV - an easy way to rent, at most, assuming that it's not immensely inconvenient and time consuming. And, until media storage and bandwith capabilities makes movie downloads as comparably small and downloadable as individual songs are now, that's not likely to happen any time soon.

The Video Game Movie: An Untapped Resource

Although some of the best film screenplays have come straight from the mind of the screenwriters, adapted screenplays have an equally long history, and are no less successful. The source that the story is adapted from can be any of a variety of mediums. The brilliant "Children of Men" was adapted from a book, "Across the Universe" from a collection of songs by the Beatles, and the wildly popular "300" from a comic book. Most famously, the "Pirates of the Carribean" Trilogy was based on the Disneyland ride of the same name.

But out of all mediums recently mined, the video game has been the most unsuccessful. For years, the industry rarely strayed past the notion of using video games as an accessory to market a film. By making an "officially licensed game" that would make interactive the experiences of the movie, companies can cash in on a film's success, or a game could serve as advertising for a film. This has been done for years, with everything from Disney movies to blockbuster action films. Recently, however, the opposite has happened - film companies have been releasing movies based on the video games themselves. However, they have been almost exceptionally terrible - many are not even screened for critics before wide release, a move studios only make if they know that the reviews will be almost universally poor.

The debate rages on, however, as to which side of the creative process is responsible for the apparently poor quality of video game releases. Is it the source material, a young form of entertainment media that is without artistic merit, or the adapters, treating a fully-formed art form with out the proper care and respect to translate it to another medium? To be fair, it is equal parts of both. For instance, the latest video game translation, Hitman, is based on an intriguing premise that, as a game, was quite unique: a hitman is genetically engineered, and scours the world killing the worst the world has to offer. While the idea of an engineered vigilante had premise, the story of the game never really went past that.

But what film producers fail to grasp is that there is an ultimate purpose in a video game that is completely different from any pre-recorded medium -- The interactive experience. In any game that is well-received, the emphasis is on the player enjoying the game, and not the sound or story. Therefore, these qualities are necessarily secondary when a game is created. Since many games are inspired by film genres themselves, their storylines tend to follow the outlines of thousands of Hollywood movies before them. It should be no wonder, therefore, that when a movie translation sticks to the plot, they only seem like mediocre action films at best. This means that games will work mostly to establish a particular mood or setting, create a shell of a story, plug in a thematically attractive character, and then focus on the gameplay from there.

If producers would understand this fundamental difference, then translations would be handled much differently. Rather than looking to capture the specific storyline, producers should look to capture the soul of the game's story and themes. In these details, games are prolific in what they have to offer. Games usually contain backgrounds and levels that are akin to fully realized sets, and the characters are often constructed simply to get an image across (the Loyal American Soldier, or Amoral Con Man, for instance).

In fact, if this is kept in mind, games that have a near-complete lack of story could translate to an excellent film. One of the most successful games of the 2007 holiday season was Rock Band, a game created entirely around the idea that even the most musically challenged consumer has had visions of emulating their favorite rock stars. The game itself has little story, but the players that indulgein it can create any style of band they desire, and grow their band from indie sensation to rock legend throughout the game's story mode. If a film were to be made strictly following this, it would be quite poor. However, if it followed the idea, casted up-and-coming but everyday-esque actors, and turned them into phenomenons (something akin to HBO's Entourage, but for a music band instead of an actor), then that film could have the creative prowess to translate into a successful video game movie.