The future of DVD is…DVD
Clint Deboer writes 10 reasons why HD DVD is doomed to failure. There is precisely one reason that HD DVD is doomed to be the next laserdisc (at best): there is nothing better about it. That is a lie - there is lots of new technological improvements, but if you ask the average consumer what they think, they will tell you that they see nothing new. Comparing the DVD to HD-DVD transition to the DVD to VHS, most consumers will tell you they buy or rent DVDs because they can skip the previews, don’t have to rewind and the picture never gets fuzzy in the middle of the movie. Compared with the videophiles who bought DVDs for better quality, most people are only now buying HD TVs and starting to realize that DVDs actually look and sound better.
Clint is right on the mark comparing the HD-DVD format wars to competing video game systems. Another big difference is that (small children aside) most consumers do not watch the same movies daily whereas people do play the same video games repeatedly. The only consumer media formats that have gained wide acceptance have been the unified ones: from LPs to tapes to CDs and from VHS to DVDs. All new DVD players can also play both SACD and DVD-Audio but those formats are dead in the water. If there was new software (i.e. movies) available exclusively on HD-DVD then we may see increasing interest. When faced with the proposition of having to buy a new player and then pay double the price for the same exact material (better quality aside), consumers will go with what’s cheap and easy.