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The Future is Expensive. The Future is Blu.

Blu-Ray DiscThe war is over. It raged for two years. It was looking like it would continue for another year, at least, but then, to pretty much everyone’s surprise, it was over. This time Betamax won.

Of course I am really talking about the HD DVD versus Blu-ray format war. A few weeks ago Toshiba, the company behind HD DVD, gave up the fight. The tipping point was Warner Brothers, the film studio, changing its policy of releasing on both formats and instead just backing Blu-ray. Up until then the content market between the two formats was roughly equal. Warner Brothers tipped the balance. The remaining HD DVD only holdouts began their rumblings, if not officially. The format war wasn’t doing anyone any favours, merely scaring off all but the most determined early adopters. Sales figures were abysmal for both formats. The sniff of a victor was all that was needed by the industry. It was all over within a month of the Warner Brothers announcement.

I was one of those sitting on the fence. I promised myself I wouldn’t buy a High Definition player until the format war was over (or, at least, a foregone conclusion – the loser may have held on long past the point of no return). It’s been over for a few weeks now. Toshiba has thrown in the towel and Sony are doing their dance of joy. I didn’t expect to be buying one this early in the year. I thought maybe in the autumn. No. We’ve not even made it to spring and my resistance has failed me. Yes, I’ve bought a Blu-ray player.

Thursday/Friday of last week I was in the grip of the urge. The investigation phase had begun. What player? Where’s the best deal? The constant back and forth of should I wait longer or dive in. I went into every shop in town I could think of that might have one. There wasn’t much between them. In the end there was only one player worth looking at, only one that could be upgraded to the forthcoming ‘Profile 2.0’ Blu-ray software version. The PS3. Could I find a ‘movie bundle’ with one? Could I heck! In the end I paid the RRP (£299.99) but got a £45 game with it (which still remains sealed – I always hated the Playstation controllers, I much prefer the keyboard and mouse of the PC or the Wii remote).

There I was, walking out of Game on Sunday afternoon with a rather large box under my arm in search of Blu-ray films, the clock of Sunday opening hours against me. Given the format has been around for a couple of years I expected that most DVD stocking shops would have a small section. No. I was wandering around for about an hour trying to find a place with stock and decent prices. No such place exists in Crawley, it seems. The usual bargain DVD places, the supermarkets, were a bust. Asda (with its very cheap online Blu-ray collection) had none. Sainsburys had none. Tesco had none. WH Smiths had none. HMV did have some but only at full RRP. The same with the Virgin Megastore (sorry, Zavvi). Woolworths had a collection too, slightly cheaper, but they didn’t have the one disc I was after: Casino Royale. In the end I found it for £19.99 at GameStation. Still more than I’d like to have paid for it but better than the £25 that HMV and Zavvi were trying to get out of me! If I hadn’t wanted it for that evening I would have just ordered it online. That’s what I will have to do in future. Not that I expect to buy many Blu-ray discs, in the same way I’ve cut right back on buying DVDs in the past couple of years. Rental is the way to go. I’ve already added a good dozen or so BDs (the slightly silly official acronym for Blu-ray Discs) to my rental list, all top priority!

The lack of titles for Blu-ray was quite a surprise to me. Two years but so few films on disc? No matter, this is a longer term proposition. Certainly the Casino Royale Blu-Ray image quality is great. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate my DVD copy to do a direct comparison but I’m long used to HD quality now, thanks to the BBC HD television channel. Casino Royale looked better than BBC HD – I didn’t notice any compression artifacts on the Blu-ray disc, something I can’t always claim for BBC HD. This is what my 1080p LCD panel was made to show.

It’s going to be a while before we see serious take up of Blu-ray. A couple of years before we see any Doctor Who on the format, for example. There is hope for Torchwood rather sooner, though. In the meantime the latest Hollywood films are sure to appear on the format, probably US TV boxsets too. Also this PS3 is a rather more capable multimedia device than I expected – it can stream video files off a network. Time to start ripping my existing DVD collection to a media server…

Just a shame it had to be the Sony format that won. About time they had a winner, I suppose. I was hoping for a HD DVD victory (despite the lower capacity of the discs), if that had won then my first bought disc would have been Serenity (it’s only on HD DVD at the moment, that will surely change in coming months). That there is a winner is the main thing, though. Now we can all get behind the format and start enjoying 1080p video!

2 Responses to "The Future is Expensive. The Future is Blu."

  1. Ian Mc says:

    You fairly early adopters eh? It’ll be a long old time before I get there. I truly wonder if another disc-based format isn’t a mis-step. Shoudn’t we all just be downloading our copies of these films from the great server in the sky? Or having them injected straight into our cerebral cortex by now?

    Good choice on the first disc btw… I’d ask to borrow it but it’s probably best if I come around to view… ‘spose I’d better invest in an HDTV at some point! It’s on the list… after a bathroom, a kitchen, etc. Do you serve popcorn in the intermission?

  2. Lots of people are talking about downloads of films but the problem is bandwidth and usage caps. A single layer BD is 25GB, a dual layer 50GB. Assuming all the current discs are single layer and assuming they aren’t all using the disc to capacity, we are still probably looking at about 20GB for a film, without compromising picture quality. With most people not able to get more than about 6Mbit/second ADSL (and halve that for effective bandwidth after transport headers and the like are taken into account) we are some years off a realistic download service. Let’s not even talk about bandwidth caps being hit with a single download of that size (something that seriously needs addressing). It will come but we are a good 5-10 years off, I’d expect. That is about as long as most people have been using DVD, so Blu-ray looks to have a similar life span.

    As for Casino Royale – it does look great, especially noticeable on the pin sharp opening credits. Also I think it comes with uncompressed audio, it certainly sounds fantastic in 5.1. It’s almost like being in a cinema but without the irritating idiots around you and lacking the damage to the film print (and out of focus problems) that are so often seen at the local Virgin/UGC/Cineworld multiplex.

    On the intermission, not sure I’d look so good in an usherette uniform (we shall never know!) but I’m sure I could rustle up some popcorn! You should come over some time for a film night – you’d have the choice of, er, one film! I should soon have a second soon – Transformers The Movie! There’s also the possibility of my current random rental.  I’ve just sent back my latest rentals this morning, both were Blu-ray (I was surprised to get them so soon, obviously demand hasn’t ramped up for them yet). Those were Phone Booth and Spider-man 3. Both I’d seen at the cinema, so I knew what to expect. Spider-man 3 was still a disappointment but it looked and sounded good (almost too good – the CGI was all the more painfully obvious!)

    The best bit is that all of this is readily available to all. There is absolutely nothing special about my set up. Next time anyone buys a new TV they will almost certainly get a HD capable set (you can hardly buy anything else anymore). Blu-ray players are fairly reasonably priced already and should only go down during the course of the year. Discs are expensive but so were DVDs in the early days. It may take a couple of years for those to drop to near DVD prices but they will.

    So, yes, bathrooms and kitchens should come first but if you want to treat yourself after that, then what better than some High Def goodness? Okay, don’t answer that..!

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