OPINION: Blu blues
By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 2/22/2008
FEB. 22 | I’VE COVERED the high-def format battle longer, perhaps, than any other reporter. I started writing about it sometime back in 2002, when JVC came out with its tape-based D-VHS format, and I had to fight to get stories about it in the paper.
Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda
From there, I followed the development of what became Blu-ray Disc, first as an MPEG 2-based recording format and later as a prerecorded format, as well as HD DVD from its earliest days as the Advanced Optical Disc format.
And now that the format war is well and truly over, I have a strangely empty feeling inside, as if I don’t know what to do with my life…
Just kidding! Thank God that’s over. No one was more tired of writing about that mishugas than me. And it’s to everyone’s benefit that the industry has finally settled on a single, high-def format, particularly the consumer, who can now make a rational decision about whether to upgrade to high-def.
Still, it has been a remarkable story to cover, not least because it’s a story of how individual companies, pursuing narrow, often parochial interests, led to the industry’s adopting what—I’ll now confess—I’ve always believed is the wrong format.
I don’t say that lightly; I have many friends and sources at Blu-ray-affiliated companies whose judgments I respect, who appear sincerely to believe in the benefits of Blu-ray over HD DVD. And as a reporter and analyst, it wasn’t my role to take sides. But I never did buy Blu-ray’s alleged benefits, and I think the industry will pay a price for getting it wrong.
Read the full column at ContentAgenda.com.
