The War is Over (of Formats, Men and Tech)

Yesterday, Toshiba pulled the plug on their HD format: HD-DVD. (official press release) Thus ending a 2 year bitter format war that the consumer and industry never wanted. Did they forget the last one? (SACD vs DVD-Audio) You've probably never heard of them.... there's a reason for that. No one won... and the consumer lost. Now were stuck with low quality MP3/AAC files and overly compressed CDs.

Thankfully, the industry can now focus on BluRay disc, hopefully creating the same success as the DVD. Many pundants are still hoping that BluRay will fail, and we will go straight to downloads. Call me old fashioned, but I still like to have a tangible product that I can hold in my hand, and not have to fear what service may go down in flames next (think Wal-Mart, Yahoo, etc.) leaving everyone stuck with DRM encoded files that you can't transfer, backup or recover if something happens to your CPU.

What does this all have to do with Design? As a creative and creative content provider, we have been watching this closely. If you have had the opportunity to see one of the 2 Pixar films out on BluRay right now, you'll know why we are such huge BluRay fans. (I have now had the opportunity to see CARS over 30 times... thanks to my 2 year old... and thankfully, it still hasn't gotten old). BluRay gives you the opportunity to see movies as the original content creators are seeing and hearing them. This provides a rare opportunity for the end user and content creator to be much on the same plane of viewing experience. As designers, we are always dealing with limitations... good and bad. Printing is not an exact science, and quite often doesn't measure up to what the designer has envisioned. Web certainly has it's limits, whether resolution, bandwidth, etc. 

All of that said, we hope that now with the format war over, those of you interested in HD and all that it has to offer, will go out and set yourself up with a BluRay player and HDTV. See for yourself what the content creators have been able to see and hear all of these years. Player prices are coming down all of the time, but your best option may be a PS3. While I'm not much of a gamer, I enjoy an old game of Pacman or Joust every so often. And with the PS3, it's such an open platform, it can be upgraded for many years to come through firmware updates. No more long faces, go out and be Blu.

You can follow more recent news at the video enthusiast website: www.thedigitalbits.com