Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both offer an impressive video experience. They also offer improved digital audio. Many people have been slow to upgrade because there are currently two heavily competing formats and the players and disks cost a bundle to take home. Blu-Ray players are still hanging around $1,000.
One British company may have found a way for both next-generation formats to exist in harmony.
New Medium Enterprises has developed technology to put multiple layers, containing multiple video formats, on single disks, which can be duplicated cheaply, removing consumer confusion in purchasing next-generation movie formats.
Consumer confusion breeds hesitation and hesitation breeds slow sales. If this technology takes off, it would be the first time in home-movie history that two previously competing formats were able to thrive in co-existence.
CNN reported the company has created a method to write multiple layers to a single disk cheaply, with a decreased risk in low yield or bad disks.
The technology hopes to result in a world where Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba-backed HD-DVD can both succeed. It's a great idea and something that does have a lot of potential, but I do not think this will happen. One technology will inevitably surpass the other. Like betamax and laserdisc, this town ain't big enough for two formats.
Blu-Ray has been the early leader, but its price has hindered any kind of brand explosion. Both formats have suffered from a mass of sub-par titles as different movie studies feel the waters.
Some people are asking, "Why bother?" and there is genuine consensus that we should just stick with DVD. These same people, however, thought VHS would survive against DVD, which was also expensive at the time.
So why bother with this technology?
Look at the prices of traditional DVD players and 5.1 home theater audio/video receivers. They are dropping at a very rapid pace. The next generation of home video can produce DTS ES 7.1 digital sound standard and 1080p high-definition resolution.
DVD is not high-definition. It looks and sounds great, but we are still at the point where a $5,000 plasma television really can't do what it's meant to do under current technology.
Only time (read: the 2007 holiday shopping season) will tell.
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