The Clymo Brief: How Sony won the HD war
These are interesting times if you’re a skinflint like me on the lookout for a cheap and cheerful high definition DVD player. Following the Toshiba decision yesterday to give HD DVD the chop, it shouldn’t take me long to find one going for a song. After peaking at around a million worldwide, sales of the units have been on an increasingly slippery slope in recent weeks following a relentless barrage of negative press surrounding the format.

I walked into an electronics superstore the other day and was greeted by an enthusiastic chap who guided me to the high-definition section. He gave me a bemused look when I asked him if he thought HD DVD was soon gonna be dead in the water. “I doubt it,” he said looking a bit sheepish. Well, they did have a lot of stock and the store manager was hanging around in the background like a bad smell, so perhaps he was right to try and appear confident that all was well with the format.

Toshiba has certainly taken a pounding in the last few days and on Tuesday finally announced that the format they devised now looks set for extinction in the face of competition from Sony and it's Blu-ray technology. That probably leaves a sour taste in the mouth if you’ve already spent a few hundred quid on an HD DVD player. Toshiba reckons that it will take around 100,000 unsold units back from retailers so if you do still want one you’d better be quick. Mind you, eBay currently has plenty.

Looking back over the last few months’ activity it’s not hard to see why things have finally come to a head. Sony undoubtedly has contacts in all the right places, with exclusive tie-ins with many of the leading DVD manufacturers like Panasonic, Phillips and Sharp. Toshiba attempted to fight back by cutting the costs of their HD DVD machines but it was too little too late. The Blu-ray campaign staged a counter attack in January with its own sales promotions in the US. Post Christmas sales figures also confirmed that movies in the Blu-ray format outstripped those of HD DVD. Toshiba pressed on, spending a big wedge of cash on an advertising extravaganza at the Super Bowl, but to no avail.

Perhaps one of the biggest blows to morale in the HD DVD camp was when American chains like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and the American rental colossus Netflix decided to pledge their allegiance to Blu-ray. On this side of the pond, Woolworths announced that they were going to ditch HD DVD titles for Blu-ray. Added to that, movie-making giant Warner Brothers announced that they would be releasing DVDs in the Blu-ray format only. Universal, who alongside Paramount, were keen supporters of HD DVD, will now have no option but to join the mutiny alongside entertainment giants like Disney, Fox, New Line and HBO who are all in favour of the Blu-ray technology.

Really though the biggest reason for the demise of HD DVD is Sony’s PlayStation 3. That has Blu-ray capability built-in. Sony has sold well in excess of 10 million PS3’s. Toshiba sold a tenth of that number with their HD DVD machines. You don’t need to be an accountant to see how that stacks up. Microsoft was an original backer of HD DVD, but it’s rumoured to be developing a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. An integrated one could follow soon after. In the meantime though, why not graft on a bargain HD DVD drive to your beloved Xbox? Again, see eBay.
It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out. Maybe the future of high definition won’t even lie in Blu-ray but via the internet instead? Microsoft is busy pushing their LIVE Marketplace Video Store and announced a deal with Paramount only this week. It looks set to enjoy a feisty bunfight with Apple and their iTunes Movie Rental scheme. The latter has brokered a deal with a bunch of movie studios that could help make their revised Apple TV concept really catch on and you don’t even need a Mac or PC to do it. But that’s another can of worms.

It’s therefore entirely possible that we might be better off focussing our attention on HD downloads, much to the chagrin of Internet Service Providers who are already fretting about the amount of online content being streamed by their customers. Trouble is, high-definition movies are big, and in a country like the UK with a very hit and miss broadband infrastructure, is that really the most realistic way forward? I dunno about you, but if I want to see a film I want to see it now, not when an interminable download has finally finished.

So, in the meantime, it’s good news for Blu-ray and its many fans but also good news for me. I can buy that redundant HD DVD player and a stack of my favourite films for the price of a few pints and a takeaway. Who cares if the format is dead? I’ll keep it for a year while I wait for the next audio-visual sensation to come along and then chuck it. See you by the bargain bins…

The Clymo Brief: Underwater gadgets