Last Time, Our Blu Hero was…

Last time I made some predictions about the future of Blu-ray, I set some specific targets I saw as the direction that Blu-ray needed to move,  in order to enjoy some success. I said that if there was a $5 difference in the price of media and a $50 difference in the price of players, then it would be a no-brainer for the typical consumer to pay a little more for a jump in quality. I didn’t think people would pay double for better quality, though, which was where we were when I made that prediction. And yet the times, they are a-changin’.

Recently, I was at a store. I won’t say which one, but it rhymes with Bostco. This store often has high-end merchandise, but only high-end merchandise for which there is strong demand. This store doesn’t go in for fads on things like movies, it waits until there is an established market. Blu-rays have been on the market for years, but this store didn’t until very recently sell movies on Blu-ray, although they have sold the players for several years. This store typically sells DVDs of older movies for $10-$12. When I saw that they had Blu-ray versions of some movies for $15, I knew that the price barrier had finally been broken and things were looking up for Blu-ray.

While media is adopting appropriate mass-consumer pricing, its still hard to find a Blu-ray player at a reasonable price. Players can be found for as little as $199, but that’s still a hefty premium over a bottom-of-the-barrel DVD player, as those start at around $50. Blu-ray Players still need to drop another $50-100. If they hit $100 by Christmas, almost everyone will find one under the tree, and Sony’s gambles will have paid off. It’s been a rough road, Blu-ray, but I think you’re gonna make it after all.

Standard Definition

A Movie DVD contains compressed video at what we refer to as Standard Definition, 480 lines of resolution. DVDs introduced progressive video, which was an improvement over older interlaced signals. Instead of alternating odd and even lines, progressive video presents every line every time. This results in a smoother picture than older television systems were capable of producing.

High Definition

Television has now moved beyond the limits of standard definition. 720p and 1080p dramatically increase the number of pixels displayed on a screen. Screens can display better images, but the medium that distributes the stuff you want to watch lags behind. DVDs are stuck at Standard Definition.

This isn’t the first time that there has been a lag between the ability of a TV to display a better picture and the lack of a medium to store video. VHS (Video Home System), the most popular form of VCR (Video Cassette Recorder)  could only display 240 lines of resolution. I was recently attending a seminar delivered over the course of several weeks, and each week we watched a DVD. There was a problem with the group who had lent the DVDs, and they needed them back. The organizer managed to borrow an alternate copy, but it was a set of VHS tapes. I was amazed at what a difference it made to go back to the old format. Faces were fuzzy and indistinct. I never had a problem with VHS 15 years ago, but once you get accustomed to something better you realize the difference and going back is painful.

The Contenders Vie for the Crown

DVD has not yet been succeeded by another format. HD-DVD and Blu-ray were two new formats that were meant to replace the DVD. One is now defunct, and the other is struggling to gain traction. There is speculation it will never become popular enough to truly replace DVDs. One reason why Blu-ray struggles is that DVDs are really, really inexpensive. This is partly because those who sell DVDs see the end of the line and are rushing to make all the money they can before the gravy train ends. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because they’re the same people who want to Blu-ray to take off. Making DVDs dirt cheap changes people’s expectations of what a movie should cost, so the movie industry is shooting itself in the foot.

Fortunately, the people behind Blu-ray have announced plans to lower costs for the new format in the near future to kick-start the transition. Let’s hope that happens.

The Conversion Experience

Upconverting DVD players are the other reason Blu-ray hasn’t taken off. Older DVD players didn’t always look all that great on the new high-resolution screens. This is because the screens are so precise. To illustrate, let’s assume that you have a bar with 4 lights on it. The lights flash according to a pattern. If you want to display that same pattern on a bar that has 8 lights, it’s easy because you just double the pattern, and wherever light number 1 was flashing, both 1 and 2 now flash. Wherever light number 2 was flashing, both 3 and 4 flash, and so on. The pattern translates easily, because it’s just double. But, what if there are only 6 lights? Now, you can’t just double the pattern, you need to make choices about which lights will flash when to best represent the original pattern, but you’ll never get a pattern that identically represents the original pattern because the math doesn’t divide evenly.

One of the great ironies of Digital television is that it is so precise, it shows up flaws. Older, analog TVs could fudge an image and come out looking OK. It is important that that you feed a Digital TV a properly formatted signal so that it displays correctly. The better the TV the better a good signal will look and the worse a bad signal will look. It cuts both ways.

An upconverter improves the way your existing DVD collection looks on your big screen TV. An upconverter doesn’t improve the resolution, it still works from 480 lines of resolution because that’s all that’s available on a DVD, but it takes the original image and stretches it smoothly over the larger space, fudging the numbers to keep things looking smooth, despite the fact that the numbers don’t translate evenly.

To understand the difference, imagine a balloon with words written on it. Before the balloon is blown up, the words are small and clear and you can read them. An old DVD player playing on a big screen TV is kind of like stretching the balloon with your hands to try and make it bigger. The image will be uneven. An upscaler or upconverter stretches the image smoothly, like blowing up the balloon. The even pressure causes each part of the image to be smoothly stretched as the balloon increases in size. It’s still the same image, starting small and stretched big. Nothing new has been added. High definition is like printing in a large font on a piece of paper. There’s no need to stretch the paper image, it’s already as large as the words on the balloon when the balloon is blown up, and it’s going to be a clearer and sharper than the stretched balloon. Even if the balloon has been stetched smoothly by blowing it up, there’s only so much ink to spread out, and it won’t be as crisp and clear as the printed page, but will still be better than stretching by hand.

In addition to smoothly stretching the image, an upconverter can output video via an HDMI cable, which is a digital cable. Older DVD Players are only able to output analog video. This means that the digital signal from the DVD gets converted to analog for the cable, then when it reaches a digital television, it gets converted back into digital. The conversion process to and from analog reduces the quality of the video signal. By using a digital cable, an upconverting DVD player maintains the digital quality of the picture from start to finish, resulting in a better picture, as long as your TV can accept HDMI.

So, an upconverting DVD player provides a smoother, clearer image on a big screen TV by stretching the image smoothly and delivering it to the TV in a digital format.

Buy a bigger Hard Drive

If you have a desktop, then it probably has room for at least one extra Hard Drive, if not more. If you have a laptop, then adding a second Hard Drive probably isn’t an option. Some laptops come with a space for a second Hard Drive, but they’re rare. If you want a bigger Hard Drive for your laptop, it likely means removing your existing Hard Drive and replacing it with a larger one. For a laptop its almost always cheaper to buy extra capacity at the start than to add it later. For a desktop, you get more bang for your buck buying a resonably-sized Hard Drive at first and then adding more later when you need it.

Optical Drive (CD, DVD, Blu-ray)

You probably have a DVD burner on your computer. Burning DVDs of all your files on a regular basis just in case your hard drive crashes or your computer is lost or damaged is a very good idea. DVDs are an easy and inexpensive way to back up your work in case of catastrophe. A Blu-ray drive will also let you back up your system, but with much more capacity, so you can put more on each Disc.

Network Attached Storage

A Network Attached Storage device, or NAS, is a box which you can put one or more Hard Drives into. The real advantage of a NAS system is that better quality units can be set to automatically back up your files. Just like your Word Processor saves the document you are working on every few minutes, a NAS can be set up to backup all your files every few minutes or once an hour as they change. This means that all your important documents can be backed up as they are created or altered. This makes it the most comprehensive and secure form of backup available.

A NAS system can be placed in a separate, secure location. If someone breaks in and steals your computer equipment, all your files would be safely stored in a separate location. You could put the box in a fireproof enclosure, or a separate building, and then it would take a massive catastrophe before you lost your data. If your data is critically important to you, then spending a few hundred dollars on a NAS system may be a worthwhile investment.

Another advantage is that a NAS system can be used with multiple computers. If you have 3-4 computers in your home or small office, then they can all use one device to backup their files. Having only one device for all your computers makes this option more cost-effective.

Online Storage

Like a NAS system, online storage can be programmed to back up your files automatically on a schedule. Instead of buying the hardware, you pay a monthly fee to rent storage. The advantage is that you can back up your files anywhere you have Internet access, only pay for what you need, and expand your storage any time you need to. The disadvantage is that someone else is storing your data. I don’t mean to comment on the reuptation of the companies that offer this service, but some of your files, for legal or privacy issues, may be too important to be let out of your control.

Use Multiple Strategies

However you choose to manage your data, the best strategy is to use more than one of the methods I’ve just described. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, as they say.

Social networking sites allow you to easily share and store photos and videos online, usually for free. But, many of them do not store pictures or videos at their full resolution. This means that you can retrieve them if you lose all your other copies, but they won’t be the same high-quality files you started out with, so you may not want to plan on using Facebook or Myspace as your primary means of backup.

Your data, whether its your work, your photos, your tax records, or whatever it is you choose to store, is precious. Take the time to back it up on a regular basis. Once a week, once a month, once a day. Pick a schedule and stick to it. That way you’ll be best prepared for the worst.

Pyrrhus of Epirus

Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek general who attacked Roman Republic forces around 280 BC. He won the battle, but won very narrowly and couldn’t effectively hold on to what he had taken. Today we call a victory that doesn’t actually result in a positive benefit a ‘Pyrrhic Victory’. Winning the battle and then having to limp home leaving the prize behind isn’t very satisfying.

VHS vs Beta

In the late 70s, Videotape devices were introduced, and they became very popular in the 80s. The two main contenders were VHS from JVC and Beta from Sony. Beta was clearly superior technologically, but VHS was cheaper and while Beta was establishing itself as the choice of the elite, VHS won the day by grabbing 70%+ of the market share, soon making Beta irrelevant.

The Birth of the DVD

A new battle started in the early 90s with formats for video discs. The obvious idea was to create something the same size as a CD which could hold enough information to store a movie, and several companies had ideas about how to do that. Thanks to some behind-the-scenes wrangling by some IBM executives, the two competing formats were brought together at a very early stage and were merged into a single format, taking the best parts of each of the original two formats that were being developed, and the result was the DVD.

A minor skirmish broke out when recordable DVDs appeared. The two camps divided into DVD-R and DVD+R, but devices soon came out which would read both, and the format war was aborted by device manufacturers who gave people the option of using either format. The DVD is a huge commercial and technological success, so it only makes sense that large corporations would learn this lesson from history and act cooperatively to develop a new format to replace the DVD, right? Not so much.

HD-DVD vs Blu-ray

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were two competing formats to replace the DVD, which only offered Standard Definition resolution. Sony designed Blu-Ray and Toshiba developed HD-DVD. Both did essentially the same thing: playback high quality video by offering much more storage capacity. But, they couldn’t play nicely. Sony had learned a thing or two with Beta. Sony priced its products competitively, built its new video game system around Blu-ray, and made back-room deals with other movie companies.

In early January 2008 HD-DVD was defeated when Sony got official backing from a strong majority of movie studios with exclusive deals. The HD-DVD camp declared defeat by cancelling an event at a major trade show. Remaining HD-DVD stock was sold off at fire-sale prices.

You would think that was the end of the story, but no. Sony learned the importance of the battle from previous conflict, but apparently it hasn’t read about poor old Pyrrhus. A year after the death knell sounded for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray still hasn’t gained enough market share to be considered ‘locked in’ as the logical replacement for DVD. Blu-Ray isn’t competing with HD-DVD anymore. It’s competing with DVDs, which have dropped dramatically in price. Why buy a Blu-Ray when DVDs are ‘good enough’ and dirt cheap.

Where is Blu-ray At?

Blu-ray has been in development since the late 90s and it’s been on the market since 2003. That means they’ve been working on it for 10 years and selling it for 5, but it still hasn’t achieved significant market penetration. As 2009 arrived, there were a virtual chorus of bloggers predicting the marginalization of Blu-ray. Worst of all, when I talk to people about Blu-ray, I still have to explain what it is most of the time.

Personally, I don’t see any other obvious options on the near horizon, so I think it’s too early to call for the marginalization of the format, though that’s likely to change by the end of 2009. There are several scenarios that seem possible to me, but it’s hard to say which one will win out:

1. Sony will read all the bad press and lower licensing fees making it cheaper to buy the players and discs. This will close the gap between the cost of buying DVDs and Blu-rays, and the market will take off, because most people will pay more for better quality, but not a lot more. When it’s less than a $50 difference per player and a $5 difference per disc, upgrading to the better version becomes a no-brainer and Blu-ray becomes the new standard, replacing DVD.
2. Sony won’t get it and will leave the expensive fees in place, because they feel they have the right to make some serious money off Blu-ray as the prize for killing off its primary competitor. Another format (probably some sort of downloadable content) will come in and steal the market away from Sony, leaving Sony to gnash its teeth in dismay yet again.

Whatever happens, there’s already a lot of content available for Blu-ray drives. They also play DVDs and CDs, so it’s not like you’re going to get stuck with an obsolete product if you buy one. Blu-rays are coming down in price and as of this writing they’re still the best (and pretty much only) way to watch commercial content at 1080p on your fancy new television set.

I don’t see buying a Blu-ray player as a bad investment, unless you spend too much. Fortunately, they are getting more reasonably priced. But you should know that if you buy one in early 2009, you’re still an early adopter and the format’s future is murky. It may turn out that Sony has expended great effort to vanquish a foe for a prize they can’t hold on to. That right there is the definition of a Pyrrhic victory.