HD-DVD vs. BLU-RAY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

HD-DVD vs. BLU-RAY - Essay Example Weaknesses are happening on a couple of fronts. On the content development front, the DVD authoring front, we continue to see extreme price pressure in authoring services. The price of DVD authoring software has come down. The fact that more and more people are doing it puts incredible pressure on the production community to develop a quality product that is certifiable over all of the various players, delivers the same experience to the customer, and builds and maintains margins in their production services. (Sweeting, 2004, p7-46) On the other side, when we look at the next generation high definition DVD disc, which will certainly be all the rage in 2006, a weakness there is how soon the consumer will embrace this technology, particularly if there are two formats. As we all know, DVD was the most successful consumer product ever launched, but if you look at it now, most people have DVD players and are very content with the experience that they get in watching DVDs in their home. How quickly will they want to purchase a more expensive DVD player to play high definition material is something everyone is grappling with right now. (Capps, 2005) It is likely that moving forward the next wave [of opportunity] will fall to special interest categories and even corporate video--outreach and recruiting applications. Certainly, the opportunities for DVD in 2006 are tremendous. Beyond the applications in the corporate, marketing and outreach programs, we'll see special niche DVDs having greater acceptance. Then, of course, we have the whole next-generation issue, which hopefully will come to the forefront in 2006. The threat, especially for high definition, will definitely be how quickly the consumer will embrace that technology, particularly if there are two competing formats. You'll also have, on another front, a continuing piracy concern. That will bring pressure on studios and on the production community to figure out ways to safeguard the transmission of the information and the actual content on the DVD. We will see more movies being released more quickly to DVD. We will see the continued growth of TV programming and music on DVD, We will see the emerging market of 'special interest' DVDs [from educational, travel, marketing, outreach, recruiting, etc.]. And of course we will see the next generation of DVDs, in high definition.Blu Ray will win the high definition DVD arms race, but my guess is that it will take some time for the 75 percent of households who already own a standard definition DVD player to slowly warm up to parting with the cash to upgrade. In all likelihood the adoption wi ll be much slower than standard DVD. The entire industry is holding off until March to launch both formats [DVD HD and Blu Ray]. So we won't be able to see until March of this year how well the fall of this year will be. Also, how fast will HD disc formats be adopted by consumers It took four years for consumers to adopt DVD; will it take six years to get them over to HD We don't really know. (Laser Focus World, 2004. p11-11) A cross-industry debate over the next-generation high-definition optical-disk format turned uglier after Microsoft and Intel publicly backed the HD-DVD standard over its Blu-ray rival. Moving beyond the turf war talk of whether PCs or consumer electronics will rule the digital living room, the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle