A DVD Format War Breaks Out Toshiba, Samsung Launching Incompatible High-Def Players; Limited Movie Titles Available
By EVAN RAMSTAD AND ANDREW MORSE Wall Street Journal March 15, 2006; Page D1 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114236502924198007.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news Hoping to avoid a confusing format war, electronics makers have spent four years battling among themselves about how to make a better DVD. They failed and two competing and incompatible versions of the next-generation DVD player are poised to hit the U.S. market. Toshiba Corp.'s entry, which goes on sale later this month at $499, is the first machine with a new DVD format called HD-DVD, a name that emphasizes "high definition" picture quality. On May 23, Samsung Electronics Co. will launch the first machine working on a competing high-definition format called Blu-ray, a reference to the color of the laser that reads the new disc. Samsung's machine is expected to be priced at around $999. On Thursday, Sony Corp. is expected to announce the details and pricing of two Blu-ray products expected to be launched later this year. The showdown comes as consumers now can buy DVD players for as little as $35 and many other options have opened up for watching movies at home. But the new DVD formats will hold five to six times the amount of data as existing DVDs, allowing movie studios and game developers to offer even better video and sound quality and more features on them. With both formats, viewers can expect to see sharper pictures, more-vivid colors and hear deeper sounds than in existing DVDs. Viewers need a high-definition television set or computer screen to take advantage of the enhanced capacities. The two types of players won't play discs made for the other high-definition format, though they will play existing DVDs and CDs. The machines have plenty of limitations as they arrive. Only a handful of movies initially will be available in the new formats. Sony recently said it aims to sell 16 Blu-ray titles by June, including "Hitch" and "Kung Fu Hustle." Other studios have committed to releasing movies on Blu-ray discs, including News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, and Walt Disney Co. The HD-DVD side has fewer studios lined up, though they say they will have movies out soon after Toshiba's HD-A1 players reach stores. Paramount is releasing movies like "Four Brothers" and "Sahara" onto HD-DVD. Warner Bros. will have titles such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." General Electric Co.'s Universal Studios Inc. will offer titles like "Jarhead" and "Doom." Prices will likely be higher at first. Sony has announced wholesale prices that translate to retail prices of $40 for new releases on Blu-ray discs, says Tom Adams of Adams Media Research, compared with $24.95 or so for new releases on regular DVD. At first, Blu-ray is catering to people who are willing to "pay a premium for the content," he says. Within a year or two, prices are likely to drop significantly. When the original DVD emerged a decade ago, the prospect of a debilitating format war drove electronics makers to agree on a single design. But no agreement emerged this time despite months of delays, informal talks between engineers, formal negotiations by corporate attorneys and many other companies with money at stake -- including movie and game studios, computer makers and software firms -- urging compromise. Toshiba hopes to grab an early lead in the race. In addition to the HD-A1, it also unveiled last week the first notebook computer with a built-in HD-DVD drive, which will be available in late March or early April in some areas. The company upgraded the screen on the device to take advantage of the better DVD player. Meanwhile, the first Blu-ray machine from Sony, which led development of the format, is likely to be its Playstation 3 game machine, expected to go on sale in Japan in the next few months. But a specific date hasn't been announced and some analysts think the launch may be delayed. The company will release a Blu-ray DVD player and a Vaio notebook computer equipped with a Blu-ray drive sometime in the summer. Sony hasn't announced prices for any of its Blu-ray machines, but analysts estimate the PS3 might retail for $499 in the U.S. Manufacturers hope consumers won't let a format choice discourage them from buying a new DVD player, as happened when Betamax and VHS videotape recorders competed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But the next-generation DVD players are facing an even tougher competitive environment because there are many other kinds of recording devices to choose from, including hard-drive recorders such as TiVo, broadband-delivered video, video-on-demand and even the rise of portable, chip-based storage cards. MovieBeam Inc. last month launched a service that beams a constantly changing selection of movies directly into a set-top box that costs around $200. Customers can then rent the movies for $2 to $4. Amazon.com Inc. is believed to be pursuing a movie-download service with a summer launch date. Sales outside the U.S. will be limited by Hollywood's continued insistence on using technical codes to assign discs to certain regions. The problem of not being able to view high-quality images without a high-definition TV set or computer screen is diminishing in places like Japan, some European countries and the U.S. Some TV makers predict that nearly half of the 28 million TV sets sold in the U.S. this year will be capable of showing high-definition pictures. Currently, roughly 90% of homes in the U.S. have a DVD player. Which format will ultimately win is an open question. Sony lined up a greater number of hardware makers and movie studios to back Blu-ray, but some have shifted their allegiance as delays continued. Microsoft Corp. switched to HD-DVD and dragged Hewlett-Packard Co. in its wake. Just last month, LG Electronics Co., a longtime supporter of Blu-ray machines, decided to license HD-DVD technology from Toshiba. The company is deciding whether to bring out separate players or create hybrid devices that can accept both formats, a spokeswoman says. "It's unfortunate they couldn't come together to create one format," says Greg Mesmer of Audio Video Consulting, an electronics dealer in suburban Boston. "This divisiveness is only going to cause people to stay away." ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
