Why Blu-ray means business |1| 2|Finally, the essential reason that Blu-Ray content will drive consumer demand in an HD world is that consumers like to have something they can look at, hold, and put on the shelf. There's a strong perceived value in that, particularly as the rows of movies and content grows. Try feeling that same way about a mass of bits on a hard disk. Granted, the music industry has had to change radically because of download technology and MP3 players. But music is quite different from film. First, it's short—making it much more portable. Second, music is a more passive kind of entertainment. Meaning it adds value even in the background. But movies are a commitment kind of event. You need to sit and pay attention to them. Sure, Blu-ray is overkill for today's letterboxed movies in standard-def format. But it is also obvious that broadcasters and studios will continue to move all content development over to HD simply because it is too costly to produce everything in two formats. Sports and documentaries demand HD, but simple economics says that producers will go for one standard for all productions. But in an all-HD world, no one will tolerate HD-on-DVD—having to swap in and out a two-disc or three-disc HD movie in their player. For that matter, what type of clamshell case will you find that will not only give today's consumer the movie, but also the expected extras that come on the two-disc DVD albums? In fact, Sony and the other Blu-ray developers should be congratulated on having done a remarkable job in creating a suitable format ahead of demand for HD content, rather than after it. (Most have forgotten that CD-ROM storage came about two years late while we suffered through multi-dozen floppy installs of software on major applications.) Much of the discussions about technical and quality problems with Blu-ray hardware and playback will be resolved by 2007. Since we will have to make choices then about OS upgrades (Mac, Linux, or Vista ), then would be the time to also upgrade to Blu-ray. Source: David Doering - Aug 17, 2006
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