As I'm sure you are aware, in the last few months Sony's Blu-ray format has effectively won the high definition war against Toshiba's HD DVD system. I kept an eye on what was going on, but I followed proceedings from a distance because I hadn't invested in either of the two formats. One only needed to recall the VHS/BetaMax conflict of the early 1980s to know that purchasing a new technological product of this nature would be pretty foolish until a clear winner had been established.

So, now we have a winner, am I going to go Blu-ray? Well, for the moment, I'm not too sure. For starters, the prices are still too high. While they're no longer touching the giddy heights they were when the formats were both launched, the Blu-ray players and the discs are still a bit pricey for my liking. Special offers are also few and far between. I'm one of those people who tends to wait for the new technological gizmos to drop in price; anything else strikes me as a bit silly, because these things aren't exactly necessities. That said however, the fact that there is now a winner should mean that retailers themselves will start competing to offer the best value for money. When a market is focused entirely on one product, retailers want to be the ones selling the most for the least.

And yet, there are other things that concern me aside from price. While I'm sure that time will see the prices decrease, the fact is that Blu-ray doesn't offer the same leap in quality as DVD did from VHS. That was something big; DVDs offered major improvements in picture and sound quality, as well as better control over the film you were watching, and even special features if you were into that sort of thing. It was a very different way of watching films. Blu-ray is DVD, but a bit better, which isn't exactly a slogan I can see Sony slapping on their advertising campaigns. Part of me wonders if Blu-ray is just going to find its own little niche in the market and stay there.

History gives us examples of technological improvements that suffered, not because they were in competition with anything else, but because they didn't offer a significant step up from what people were used to experiencing. Laserdiscs offered much improved pictures and sound over VHS, but their problems seemed almost archaic to most VHS users. The discs themselves were huge (30cm in diameter), had to be turned over every 30 or 60 minutes, and, perhaps most importantly, couldn't be recorded on. This factor is often considered one of the reasons why VHS had originally triumphed over BetaMax; the latter couldn't be used for home recording. And more recently, we have seen both the DVD-Audio and SACD formats fail to replace the conventional CD. Part of this is perhaps because they are competing with each other, but it's obvious that they have become relatively specialised items and don't look set to replace the format we know.

Something else is also significant. When the DVD format was launched, one of the most impressive things about it was the speed by which older films were put on DVDs and shipped out. Now, some of the early transfers were rush jobs, often done without much cleaning of the image, and with precious few additional features. But it got the things on the shelves, and people liked what they saw. Blu-ray releases (and HD DVD, for that matter), have been decidedly slow. Yes, the transfer process for all films, both old and new, is going to be more complicated for HD formats. But it still surprises me just how few HD titles there are out there, especially compared with the choice offered pretty soon after the original launch of the DVD.

I have been impressed with what I have seen of Blu-ray and HD technology in general. I have a HD television already, which will obviously add to the experience should I take the Blu-ray plunge. But at the moment, I'm content to wait this one out.

© David Mercier
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