High-definition Videodiscs: The Route to a Single Standard

LAS VEGAS (Nevada) - By now, you're familiar with the headlines: Sony and Philips developed a compelling next-generation video disc standard. Toshiba and NEC developed a competitive format that used more conventional materials, was cheaper to implement, and had some intriguing technological frills. The major US movie studios were divided 50/50 among whose format to support as recorded movies evolved from the existing standard.

The year was 1996. That year, a compromise standard was finally reached, and the DVD industry could formally launch. But for a few years prior, the retail video industry waited in a tense state of limbo, dreading a rematch of the format wars between VHS and Betamax that generated so much consumer confusion a decade earlier. Yet the manufacturers' final compromise seemed to manifest itself out of thin air, as if warring standards were, in fact, designed to weave themselves together.

Fast-forward toward the end of DVD's shelf life as a retail product. Two weeks ago, the Video Software Dealers Association - a trade group representing rental and sales outlets such as Netflix and Blockbuster - signaled what many video aficionados have always known (and what I've had to overcome all my life): Very few sequels bearing the Roman numeral "III" are all that interesting. The Association doesn't want a rematch of the rematch of the video format wars of the 1980s. In a press release, VSDA's president, Bo Andersen - channeling another president - said, "Now we are engaged in a great format war, testing whether the next generation of packaged entertainment can long endure."

Sean Bersell, a spokesperson for the VSDA, spoke in less grandiose terms. "The window for compromise is closing; it's getting smaller every day," he told Tom's Hardware Guide, "and it appears that rather than the two camps just jockeying for position on high-definition DVD, in terms of which format will be chosen, it appears there are significant disagreements between [them] that are not going to be easily bridged."

Today, the two formats vying for omnipresence are Blu-ray, representing the greater leap forward technologically, named for its use of higher-frequency blue lasers rather than today's conventional red lasers; and HD DVD, representing the less expensive and purportedly more feature-rich alternative, requiring less up-front investment from manufacturers. Again, Sony takes the technological high road, backed by allies such as Philips which invented optical discs; and yet again, Toshiba claims greater connections with the industry at large, with renewed backing from technology partner NEC and a curious, if arm's-length, blessing from Microsoft.

Jim Taylor is Chief of DVD Technology, and General Manager of the Advanced Technology Group, at Sonic Solutions, a provider of professional DVD authoring systems. "There isn't that much of a difference between the formats," Taylor told us. "The video codecs are very similar, the audio is very similar, they've got different approaches to interactivity, [and] there are some differences in capacity, but even those aren't huge differences. So overall, it's hard to choose one format or the other based specifically on technical differences."