Care for a little conspiracy theory?
I am convinced that this whole HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war debacle was a Microsoft scheme to mess with Sony
By John C. Dvorak
02.19.08This war is not over by any means. Yes, the HD DVD format is dead, but the problem is that so many people, myself included, were so jacked around by this exercise that Toshiba and Microsoft , in particular, are not going to hear the end it for years and years. After this complete and total fiasco, the original high-def format, Blu-ray, which was in development for an eternity, wins the war. Hooray for Sony and the rest of the team—though they should be soundly booed for letting this debacle happen in the first place.
Smoke and Mirrors
As you will discover by the time you finish reading this, I am convinced that this whole thing was a Microsoft scheme to mess with Sony. There was probably never any real intent to make the HD DVD standard stick, ever.
It seemed real at first, however. In fact, most of us who followed the battle went from one camp to the other and back again for what seems like 5 years of bickering. Both camps had targeted and convincing arguments when you sat down and talked with them.
No matter what anyone says, it was Microsoft who seemed to be the money and the mouth pushing HD DVD. When you sat down with Toshiba's HD DVD folks, Microsoft was always there.
The Debate Ensues: FUD Appears
I thought that the strongest points in HD DVD's favor were some of the features the format had built into the players, including the ability to "skin" content in real time. This would include putting your head on an actor. I was also sold by the idea that old equipment could be used to crank out HD DVDs. Of course, nobody used any of the numerous fancy features of HD DVD, and the compatibility argument was best appreciated by the true counterfeiters who were stamping out movies on ships positioned outside the 12-mile limit in the South China Sea. Still, the arguments sounded good.
The Blu-ray folks—who tended to be from Sony or Panasonic—were always defensive about this war. When you sat down with them, they seemed miffed, actually. It was as if this Johnny-come-lately HD DVD format came into the game late just to screw with them. Sony had been working on Blu-ray for years, and this situation and this interloper was ridiculous to them. It was kind of funny to witness this seething.
The Blu-ray folks never had the best arguments for their format because they never thought they needed them. They did emphasize that Blu-ray would always have more capacity than HD DVD. Also, Blu-ray was more amenable to being used with a computer as the backup device of the future.
This bickering would go back and forth, along with the notion of a combo player, which would require twice the licensing fees and discrete mechanisms. It became apparent early on that the combo player would not fly.
Playing Dirty
My favorite iteration of the HD DVD campaign was the negative push whereby all you heard was how Blu-ray disks would scratch easily and be ruined by a single thumbprint, or how they are hard to manufacture, and on and on. This was an orchestrated attack and none of it was true.
The whole battle was then compounded by the prices of the initial drives when they hit the market (Blu-ray was expensive, HD DVD was cheap). This was further exacerbated by the $199 HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. Sony came out of the chute slowly with the PS3, which would have a built-in Blu-ray drive. There was a sense that the entire HD DVD war was just a grand scheme to submarine Sony and the PS3 in some way.
And there were notes of insincerity coming from the HD DVD camp. The early players were a joke. They ran Linux and took forever to boot. I thought these clunkers were peculiar and sensed the invisible hand of Microsoft making sure that Linux was associated with the thing. I also noticed that Microsoft was not making the HD DVD a permanent feature on the Xbox—just an add-on. That was fishy.
Again, none of the special HD DVD features that were so cool were ever implemented. Review units were hard to come by. The normally responsive and aggressive Microsoft promised me all sorts of collateral to look at and review and yet they delivered nothing. It was as if they were stalling, knowing full well that the HD DVD house of cards was about to collapse.
The Scheme Ends
In hindsight, I have to conclude that the entire exercise was a sham, plain and simple. Perhaps it was part of a larger marketing effort to screw with Sony.
And I am sure there is more to this tale than I know or can even theorize. Of course, I cannot really prove my assertions. Maybe Toshiba and Microsoft were sincere in this effort. Maybe one company was manipulating the other. Perhaps they both had some grudge against Sony for who knows what. I can assure you that the public will never find out one way or the other, and the whole thing will be written off by the public as some sort of Beta versus VHS battle. And that is that. Business as usual.
This was not a Beta versus VHS battle. It was something unique and weird and onerous. And it was a big waste of everyone's time and money.
