The Clicker: Remember when format wars were about us?

Every Thursday Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, a weekly column on entertainment and technology:

Laser beams, cryptography, modifiable weapons – we must be talking about war, right? Yup, well… at least a format war, and nothing gets one going in the morning like a good format war.

While the war between the two next-generation disc formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD rages on and consumers sit in their all-too-familiar paralyzed purchasing state, the time seems right to ponder what these wars and the future of these wars mean to consumers.

After all, it's been an interesting couple of weeks for HD-DVD and Blu-ray. On Friday July 29th, Fox announced that it would be backing Blu-ray. In doing so they would be joining Disney and, of course, Sony in the Blu-ray camp. Thus, the major players are split down the middle with Universal, Warner, and Paramount on the other side in the HD-DVD camp. Then, on August 9th, Blu-ray finally announced its plans for keeping its content secure. As expected, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has, like HD-DVD, chosen Advanced Access Content System (AASC). However, BDA will also be adding two additional defenses: BD+ and ROM Mark.

Sounds like a typical format war, right?

This war, however, is different from many others. In the format wars of the past, the victory came to he who could give the customer the most; or, at least that was ostensibly the goal. For instance, Betamax was largely touted to have better video quality. VHS, on the other hand, was quick to deliver longer running tapes. If memory serves me correctly, the presence of porn might have also played an, uh, hand in VHS�s victory (but pornography�s affect on technology decisions is fodder for a whole different column). In any case, the market (more or less) chose its technology.

Likewise, the DVD format wars had the consumer in mind. DVD-RAM, +, -. +-RW, etc � they all had pros and cons. Don�t get me wrong; patents and licensing fees played a prominent part in the play. However, at the end of the day, the parties involved were careful to frame the debates to appear to have the consumer in mind. For instance, DVD-RAM backers would advertise their durability and their better handling of random access. At the same time DVD-R and DVD+R backers were quick to point out that their technologies were compatible with existing players.

So why is this war different from all other wars? Andrew Setos, president of engineering for the Fox Entertainment Group, put it best when he officially declared that the customer was no longer their main concern saying, �Our announcement last Friday that we would be, in fact, publishing on Blu-Ray disc was a result of content protection, and no other issues,� Setos went on to say that included in �no other issues� was the higher cost of Blu-ray disc production. That�s right � HD-DVD and their use of AACS was not enough for the good people at Fox. They needed, nay, demanded more copy protection � the cost be damned. Toshiba and their HD-DVD ilk shot back, claiming their copy protection was tough too. Isn�t it great to hear two groups fighting over who can best lock down content?

Perhaps the scariest aspect of Blu-ray�s latest salvo is the use of BD+. Similar in concept to DirecTV�s piracy countermeasures, BD+ is Blu-ray�s method of responding to hacked machines. BD+ allows Blu-ray to both a) change the security system on a device and b) lock out hacked machines.

For instance, let�s assume that a device is hacked (a fair assumption). BD+ would allow Blu-ray to essentially render the hacked devices useless. OK � that�s a concept we�ve heard before. Key revocation is nothing new.

The difference is that BD+ can also be used to get the disabled machines back up and running (back in a protected state of course). At this point you might be wondering why that�s bad. It�s a fair question. After all, it�s designed to help you. The problem is that it might just be the added comfort Blu-ray needs to pull the trigger and disable the device in the first place.

Conventional wisdom has always been that companies wouldn�t have the chutzpah to actually revoke devices. The outcry would be too great. The collateral damage would be massive. BD+ helps assuage the fears. In theory, BD+ should be able to target only hacked devices (and not vulnerable devices). However, it�s rarely that easy. Any mistaken revocations of valid devices would have consumers up in arms. Furthermore, anyone who has lived through one of DirecTV�s massive card swaps is aware that these measure-countermeasure games only last so long before the countermeasures are exhausted and the game is over (winner: hackers). It�s a temporary solution to a long term �problem.�

Somewhere along the line technology companies lost sight of who their customers were. They seem to have forgotten who purchases all those players. So worried were they that content companies would license their catalogs to the �other� company that they forgot who was paying the bills. They forgot who would be buying their products. The result appears to be two companies fighting to offer their customers less and less functionality; two competing technologies, in an effort to distinguish themselves from what were very similar products, have decided to forgo the �let�s pool our licensing fees and all win� route. Instead they�ve decided to wage a �I can best capitulate to the whims of the content providers� war.

At best, these capitulations merely raise the cost of development and production of the next generation players. At worst, they represent a usability nightmare.

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If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop an email to [e-mail]

[okwhatever @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

so who won the dvdr format war, dvd-r or dvd+r?

[Andy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

I don't know who this clicker guy is, but I do enjoy the articles. It would be nice to know what is at stake (i.e., What were the revenues from the original DVD licensing scheme, and what was the financial end result of the DVD-ROM RW+/- war, etc.) Microsoft could put this whole thing to rest by selecting Blu-Ray for the XBOX but it seems that is not likely to happen.

Good read. Thanks

[CH @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Both formats have an uphill battle to fight. The advantages they offer consumers only have value to a small group of consumers. It isn't just that you have to have an HDTV- you have to have an HDTV with HDCP.

I can't see either format "winning" without easing up on the restrictions (unfortunately then there would be no content). Maybe in 5 years the market will be ready for these formats.

[tf @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Bleh!!! These articles get stupider each time. So what: the content providers are making a choice based on their needs. Guess what: this happened in previous format wars and still continues with such choices as SACD, and DVD Audio, etc... and in video with some companies choosing to support WMV content in addition to MPEG content. AND THEN...

We the end consumers still have the decision to buy HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players and burners. The war hasn't been fought and ended yet.

And in every case where we are discussing media, you can't reduce the consumer to just the end user: we are talking about a tiered market place with many consumers: content producers, broadcasters, device manufacturers, and end users.

This is pointless. There is nothing significantly different about this battle from others except for the possiblity that it may be resolved before it ever begins because the superior format simply gets chosen by the most consumers (of every type) before getting to market.

[p-ddidy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

That's funny. Usually I see "tf" bookended by "s" and "u." Now I know why.

--p

[James Lopez @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

"Microsoft could put this whole thing to rest by selecting Blu-Ray for the XBOX but it seems that is not likely to happen."

Um, no. I've pre-ordered my Xbox 360 so it's not like I don't think it's gonna rock. But whether MS puts a HD-DVD or BluRay in a future version (initially all will have regular DVD-ROM drives) will have little impact on the success of the format. If HD-DVD starts to take the lead then this helps MS sell this unit without resorting to price cutting so quickly as people can then justify part of the cost of the 360 as getting a HD-DVD player included.

[Jared Roddy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

I think they should make DVDs with razor-sharp edges. That way if Blu-ray or HDDVDDVDDVD ever bursts through our doors in ninja gear, we'd be ready for them.

Further, the second one needs a better name, I have a speech impediment and I can't be going into Best Buy making a fool of myself every time I want to buy a video. I'm slobbering all over myself trying to pronounce it as it is.

[Max @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

I always thought that Betamax and Video2000 were marketed into submission; this "longer tape" thing is new to me. You learn something new everyday.

[brianosaurus @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

CH said:
> (unfortunately then there would be no content)

Even more unfortunate for the studios is that without content, there's no revenue. The "no content without DRM" argument is complete bullfeces. Its the MPAA's equivalent of holding their breath until they turn blue in the face.

Its a great sounding threat, but as soon as the devices are ready, and as soon as consumers are ready to put down their money for movies on high-def media, the studios will offer their products for sale, whether or not they got everything they wanted out of the format.

On the other hand, if groups like BluRay and HD-DVD keep checking their balls at the door, walking in backwards, bent-over, pants around the ankles, spreading their cheeks wide, you can be damn sure the studios will keep sticking it to them.

Things were way cooler when Sony's business was making electronics instead of making "precious" collections of 1's and 0's.

[JimJimBinks @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

20th century fox did the same thing when Divx DVD's were released. Remember Divx? It was around for a little while when DVD first hit the market. When fox announced they were jumping on the DVD Bandwagon they said they'd only support Divx discs because it was the best copy protection. About a year afterwards Divx died out, and circuit city started giving $100 refunds to people who'd bought Divx DVD Players instead of regular DVD Players. Fox started making regular DVD's shortly after that. I find this whole thing scary. But it'll get sorted out within a year of both formats hitting the market.

[Alien Are Coming, Run!!!!!!!! @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

This war should benefit the consumers who buy movies and games. Would you rather have a movie cost $10 more or stay the same as it is now, price right now is still high. I rarely watch a movie twice because there's not a lot of good movies anymore. So wasting $20-$30 right now on a 1.5-2.5hrs movie isn't worth it, especially crappy movies. HD movie can fit in both HD-DVD and BD with space left over. Does capacity matter? If it does, there's other format that hold way more than BD, holographic disc can hold up to 1TB. In 5-10, holographic disc might take over. So for now, I rather have a cheap movie.

[Joe @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Actually, I disagree about the capacity not mattering. An hour of (MPEG2) HD quality video using Dolby Digital sound takes up about 8 or 9 gigs of space. I understand that better codecs will help the space needed on the video side, but Dolby Digital sound is highly compressed, and will need to be put to a higher bitrate to compensate. (I still think that the MLP losslessly encoded audio scheme that they use on DVD-A should be used on whichever format wins out.)

Add to this space that just the movie takes up the rest of the special features, and multiple audio tracks, and you'd quickly run out of space on the HD-DVD disc.

As much as I don't like to want the format with more restrictions to win the format war, I think that those who want the best possible audio and video for their home theaters and HDTV's should be more behind Blu-Ray than HD-DVD.

[Donnie @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Too bad this isn't as blatant as the digital audio recording (that was not DAT) of the early to mid 1990s, the Philips DCC and Sony MiniDisc. Even backwards compatibility couldn't save the DCC format, because people don't like to wait long for their selection and pay $400 for a deck that wasn't as good as a Nakamichi. Oh, the tape stigma really kills sales, look at the Digital 8 format (which is essentially the DV format using 8mm tapes), when people are off buying MP4 memory-card and DVD recording videocameras.

Well, we see this now, the MD is aging. Hi-MD hasn't made a splash in the states, since the high-capacity DAPs on the market are catching on faster. And also what hurts is that many retailers sell the low-end MD stuff (well at least in our city) and the only thing people are referring DAPs here is the iPod (I'll leave it there).

[Andre @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

To me the winner is clear, again like in the past - its just gonna be again the LG's of the world, providing the first affordable low-cost "I-dont-give-a-s***" machines which propably find a way to play all formats including by that time some new thing we never heard of called like DivX v15 or Mpeg8, and all region-free.
The only sad thing is this whole battle makes everything more expensive from the beginning and as consumer wont buy and are frustrated the companies loose even more money, so the consumer pays again...this whole game delaying the acceptance of the new format for years.

[Jesse @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

I always wonder when it comes to these debates over content protection why it is that I, and so many other end-users feel the need to complain about it. Sure you can always argue that you should be able to make yourself a back-up copy, but that's a dubious claim at best. I've never wasted a good DVD-R to have a spare copy of Napoleon Dynamite. What I'm getting at is that we only object because we want to be able to get away with making/buying illegal copies if we want to. If nobody wanted to copy a Blueray/HD-DVD disc, would we still care what measures they go to, as long as they don't lock up our DVD players in the process? I don't think so, so the question is, do we have a right to complain that they are protecting their content too well? It's like they say on CSI "if you're not guilty you don't have anything to worry about".

But as for the stutterer's comment about the names, I have to agree. I also wonder what we will be calling the inevitable writable and re-writable formats. HD-DVD-R/HD-DVD-RW? Not to mention when they get quad layers? If I were picking formats based on names alone, I'd have to go with Blu-Ray (BR-R/BR-RW) There's no need to confuse my mother and father any further.

[Jeramy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

not to seem like a db, but its bd-r and bd-rw

[TooRob @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

i predict the winner of this war will be ...
DVD! you know we arent getting rid of it anytime soon, blu ray etc whatever could be umd for all i care - dvd is here to stay.

[Z @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

The biggest concern I have with all of this is that the movie studios have chosen to go with only one camp or the other, which means that all HD movies are only going to be available in only one format or the other - not both, which then means that for consumers to get all of the movies that they may want in HD, they'll have to buy both a Blu-Ray player AND an HD-DVD player to ensure they'll be able to watch all of the HD movies that they'll rent and buy.

People are not going to put up with all that.

That would be too expensive and stupidly inconvenient, and what happens if one of these formats dies off? People would have wasted their money buying movies in that particular format, only to have to reinvest in the remaining format.

Dumb, dumb, dumb!!!

These stupid, greedy companies need to resolve their differences and figure something out. They nurture their greed so much you'd think you could get these trolls to do a naked jig in the middle of a restaurant just by waving a dollar bill over their heads.

Bottom line: Don't buy into any of these upcoming HD players or DVDs until these companies figure it out and one standard remains. That is, unless you want to waste your money.

[Patrick @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Why should we care about content protection "if we don't have anything to hide?" Here's a real-life scenario with a bit of a twist.

Imagine that plain old DVDs had perfectly uncrackable content protection. The only place you could play DVDs would be on players authorized by the DVD creators. Since authorization of this type almost always costs alot of money (look into the content protection that HDTV over digital cable uses) open source players would almost certainly be nonexistant.

You own one of these uncrackable DVDs. You aren't a pirate or somebody trying to screw the content providers. Want to watch it on your Linux media center? Too bad. Want to copy it to a file server so you can stream it to any TV around your house? Nope; not gonna happen. These are completely legitimate uses, and not the only ones, that would suffer greatly under a DRM tyranny. I would be perfectly fine with DRM schemes if they could somehow be compelled to ensure that innovative or open technologies aren't snubbed out of existence just because the content provider doesn't like a particular display system.

[Jensen @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

"I always wonder when it comes to these debates over content protection why it is that I, and so many other end-users feel the need to complain about it."

I can play my CDs in any CD player.... my car, my computer with any operating system (no need for a special liscense) my $10 protable cd player. I can store a CD on my computer, or convert it to any audio format(wav,flag,mp3,ogg, etc). I can use any speakers with any connection that can transfer sound information. I can play it just about any CD player.

DVDs are a bit more restrictive, because of the encryption keys and such, there is less compition with software DVD players than there is with software CD players. I can't play DVDs from most other countries. I'm not allowed to save a copy on my computer for easier access.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD are even more restrictive. They require special equipment for displaying in HD. Maybe even a new HDTV when the one you bought 2 years ago works fine. Even less software support, if any at all. I won't be able to take a screenshot to use as my desktop wallpaper.

DVD did pretty well at stopping casual piracy. I've seen many people who have CD-R copies of CDs, but I don't know of anybody who has copied a DVD they owned and lent it to a friend. But I have seen movies that have been downloaded off the interenet, and I don't see how any disc protection can stop that.

[John Laur @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

This whole thing is total and complete bullshit. There should have been a consumer accessible HD recording format (DVHS is a stopgap) from the beginning when HDTVs became widely available to consumers and there should be some company with enough balls to ante up and produce a machine that takes ANALOG HD VIDEO input and records it to something -- ANYTHING that can be watched (Don't even mention WVHS -- an MPEG2 encoder DSP that can do this is like $25).

I am sick and tired of waiting years for a bogus format war to be resolved. I have an HDTV and an HD camcorder, but I can't save my video onto anything that I can guarantee that I'll be able to play even five years from now. I have a stack of HDV tapes waiting for movie studios to get off of their asses and tell me what I want to buy.

An aside here: Big props to Apple for upping the ante a bit and actually producing some editing software, dvd authoring suite, and dvd player application that tries to adhere to some sembalance of a forthcoming HD DVD standard.

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

In this big rush to come up with a secure format, have the studios forgotten about content? Frankly, most of the crap that Hollywood puts out these days I wouldn't want to have on any format -- even for free! And, why don't they start working on something more interesting -- like making holographic projectors, and coming up with a method to convert all 2D movies to holographic? This whole HDTV thing is dumb and boring!

[phantomprophet @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Just goes to show you that you are always stuck deciding between a giant douche and a turd sandwich...

All wisdom is in Southpark.

[Vinylvision @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Neither format as presently described will succeed due to DRM usability and support flaws. When folks start trying to return their expensive HD players and discs to retailers because they suddenly can't watch anything due to potential drm implementation flaws, retailers will have no recourse other than to discontinue all sales of the stuff.
All it will take is one model of player or one dvd to have a DRM problem that stops legitimate users from using the equipment, and the entire cookie will crumble. This DRM stuff has the potential to bankrupt retailers in support and return costs. To say nothing about the potential lawsuits among studios when one studio's defective disc or defective drm implementation deters endusers from purchasing the discs of other studios while the "improper implementation" problem is being resolved. My prediction is that DRM will be Hollywood's ultimate and final horror movie.

[EatingPie @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Wow I agree that this article was bogus. Right now, the formats are trying to build support. Support? That's MOVIE STUDIOS getting on board.

In an industry survey of studios, guess what the NUMBER 1 feature -- the show stopper as it were -- to ANY new format? SOLID COPY PROTECTION.

Fox's statement amounts to this: "Blu-Ray has the best copy protection. Hollywood, get off your asses and support THIS ONE FORMAT."

:-Pie

[jack @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

Who cares? One will eventually lose. Electronics companies should make a device that plays both formats, problem solved.

[Larry Mittag @ Dec 19th 2005 12:18AM]

In a normal format war there is the possibility that neither side will win. This happened with the recent attempts to displace the CD. This war will have the participants trying to remove the "home team" - DVDs - by force, since they are a constant leakage of their products. The question is if consumers will let them do that.

Larry Mittag