The Blu Ray vs HD DVD battle was won long ago and the much more worthy format of HD DVD lost not so much by a fair and open competition but by the bullying tactics of the much bigger Sony Corp. How they were allowed to get away with that is beyond me. Clearly Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita’s tactics did not work in this case. The HD DVD format was more mature, required far less processing power and far cheaper. We are only now seeing Blu Ray players that are up to the technical requirements of the format – and even now there are constant compatibility issues, none of which existed with HD DVD. In theory the Bly Ray format was technically better but the implementation of that technology was far more inferior than HD DVD.
We have recently seen the outcome of the case in Sweden of the recording industry vs Pirate Bay, round one to the recording industry. The recording industry claims that anyone who downloads a song or movie is stealing, a claim that I will not contest per se since it is a far more complex argument than they would have us think. But I ask you? Who is stealing from whom?
There have been rumours for a long time now regarding an HD format from China which was to compete with HD and Blu. It has now been released and the response of Warner Bros is to immediatly announce the release of movies in the new format. However this format will only be available in China.
It appears that the movies will be around the US$10 mark in China. Now this is very interesting. If they are able to release all of these movies in China for $10 why is it that the same movies are $30 plus on Bly Ray? The players are also said to be 40% less than the equivalent Bly Ray player. The article says that the difference is in license fees. Note that the HD players and disks were also much cheaper than the equivalent Blu Ray players and disks. The reason given was the high license fees for the technology. So what is effectively being said is that because of Sony’s bullying and anti competitive tactics we are paying 2/3 more for players and three times the price for disks. The indication is that this technology will not be available outside China. Oh, there will be very good reasons for this but will anybody but those in the publicity departments believe these excuses?
So, now comes my point. How is this not theft? For every movie downloaded they claim a loss of revenue of the RRP of that movie. Never mind that many of these people would actually never buy the movie anyway, or that because of the loss of definition the actual value is less than the DVD, or that you seldom get the extras, or that after seeing the download many of these people go and buy the movie for the extra features and quality, or that they are immediately deleted since they are broken or not what they thought. According to the article every time we spend $30 a disk $20 of it is going straight into the coffers of Sony, forget about the artists. Every time you spend $500 on a Blu Ray player $330 of that is going straight to the license holder – Sony.
So – I ask you – who are the thieves?