DVD

Last month I pointed out that Gizmodo declared the HD-DVD wars over with Blu-Ray victorious due to better studio support.  This week, four major studios lined up behind HD-DVD.  With Sony and Columbia firmly behind Blu-Ray, this is shaping up to be an interesting format war. Bill Hunt over at The Digital Bits suggests that a format war is better than the situation we had at the launch of DVD – where nobody other than Warner was promising to support the format.  He goes on to say that if hardware vendors provide universal players, actual format could be irrelevant.  In …

Interesting analysis over at Gizmodo, particularly the charts highlighting market share for the studios. I think it’s premature to declare the format wars over well before any product actually reaches the US market – so many things could go wrong for either camp. As I’ve written before (here and here, and here), a bigger issue is whether there’s much of a market for prerecorded HD content in the first place. Anamorphic DVDs cross the “good enough” threshold for most people – even on HDTVs. Star Wars on DVD – remastered yesterday, but shot in 1977 – looks spectacular on my …