The Best is Still the Enemy of the Good

Michael Gartenberg | July 30, 2007, 02:13 PM

I just finished a report on future of next generation optical disks that will be published shortly with a few surprises. It's really looking that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray may well turn out to become the laserdisk for the 21st century. The game consoles are not going to serve to tip the scales in one direction or another and the lack of a standard format combined with poor marketing and overall confusion isn't helping. Let's start with the HD-DVD folks. At first blush, they seem to have a good story. Price of players down to about $199 here in NY, a cheap add on for XBox 360 and some pretty good content coming (Both the Heros and Star Trek box sets are worth waiting for). But their marketing is atrocious.

1. First, they keep pushing HD as a driver but unfortunately, we know from our research that only a fairly small number of consumers see HD as the prime driver. In fact, their DVDs are often good enough and this is a case where the best is the enemy of the good.

2. There's no mention in any of the marketing that the players are actually pretty good at upscaling older DVD content and at $199, that's not a bad price for a player that makes my old stuff look better and of course, plays all the new stuff.

3. No mention in any of the commercials about HD-DVDs biggest difference from Blu-Ray, namely all the interactive features and web content. Sheesh, this is the very stuff that sets them apart.

4. Watching commercials for an HD player, touting HD content on a standard def channel is just, well silly. Not to mention Michael Imperioli as the spokesman for Toshiba. I'm sorry, but every time he opens his mouth, all I hear is Christopher Moilsanti speaking and that's not someone I'm buying as a spokesman for advanced Hi Def tech (remember the episode when Chris bought a DVD player.

Bottom line? The real competition here for both formats are not each other, it's DVD in the past and online distribution in the future. If consumers don't see a clear winner this holiday with some real compelling reason to buy, it's likely neither format wins.