Manufacturers fancy a reciprocal relationship in which a consumer, before watching a Spider-Man movie in high-definition video on DVD, downloads and stores on the rewritable portion of that same disc a video game or trailer for the next Spider-Man sequel. The consumer would also be able to update those games and previews as new versions come out -- and give studios the opportunity to make more direct pitches. That's the vision for Blu-ray Discs and broadband-connected recorders that Blu-ray backers described in a recent press tour.
Whether interactive features will have consumers swinging into retail stores to buy the recorders is something that only time will tell, but for the moment, such features are currently more a means to an end -- attracting studio support to the Blu-ray Disc format. Hollywood's backing could push Blu-ray to victory in the competition to be the high-definition DVD standard.
Adding interactive features "is a major focus of the application development effort," said Richard Doherty, a spokesman for Blu-ray Disc and a director at Panasonic. "It's something of great interest to all studios...The goal is to have them ready from the get-go in the first (Blu-ray Disc movie) titles."
By appealing to entertainment studios, Blu-ray Disc supporters are trying to get a leg up on a competing format, HD DVD. Allying with partners who could bestow their libraries of commercial entertainment content on the Blue-ray format would also significantly aid backers' efforts to make next-generation recorders a mass market product. Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD are vying to take the home entertainment baton from DVD, which has been one of the fastest-growing categories in consumer electronics history.
But one of these formats may have to be the Betamax, falling into obscurity as the other goes on to VHS-level dominance.
"Obviously, it is in everyone's best interest to have one (next-generation DVD) format," Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Video, said in a statement. "We are in the process of evaluating the (specifications), and we haven't made any decisions yet."
The Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats offer much higher capacity in a disc than today's DVDs, which hold up to 8.5GB on a dual-layer disc. With as much as 50GB per dual-layer Blu-ray Disc, next-generation DVDs will be a fairly cheap form of optical storage. The formats are somewhat similar but incompatible fragmenting the market and slowing development. Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD use blue lasers, which have shorter wavelengths than the red lasers in today's DVD players and both plan to be compatible with current DVD technology.
On paper, the Blu-ray Disc camp seems to have more friends than HD DVD, whose principle backers are NEC and Toshiba. Blu-ray's champions include Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic's parent), Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. But apparently you can never have too many friends -- Both groups are courting the studios.
On a grander scale, these newer DVD technologies are part of a larger cross-industry effort to untether digital content from specific consumer electronics products. Digital content isn't limited to one physical medium, such as a cassette tape, and can be easily transferred from device to device -- an MP3 file can go from desktop to portable audio player to laptop. That flexibility can let consumers enjoy digital content in new and more convenient ways. However, content companies have been cautious of this new dynamic because of piracy concerns, and have even sued file-sharing consumers. Still, many expect the entertainment industry to sell its content on next-generation DVD discs, just as it has been VHS and DVDs.
Already, a group of high-profile technology companies and movie studios have created a new copy protection standard for next-generation DVDs that could allow high-definition movies to be copied and used in home networks. At least one proponent of each format has joined the new copy protection effort to meet Hollywood's digital rights management concerns. Clearing this hurdle could prepare next-generation DVD to be the sequel to the runaway hit its predecessor has been.
Taking the DVD baton
Shipments of DVD players have been very healthy and shipments are projected to hit 110 million units. But it's a wave that has crested.
"DVD player shipments are close to a peak, and then they'll drop like a rock, like VCRs," said iSuppli analyst Shyam Nagrani.
Sales of DVD recorders are beginning to swell in the players' wake. Last year, about 4 million units were shipped, and by 2008 that figure will jump to 65 million, according to iSuppli. Nagrani said shipments of next-generation DVD recorders will likely mimic those of DVD recorders, but lag behind them by five years.
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