The battle for your living room is getting more intense on the next-generation DVD front.  With two major camps – Blu-ray, including the likes of Hitachi, Philips, Sony and Samsung, and HD DVD, pushed by the DVD Forum and headed by Toshiba and NEC – fighting for their technology to become the eventual blue laser DVD standard. With what is seen by analysts as little difference from a technology standpoint, the groups have called in reinforcements, Hollywood style.

On the Blu-ray side, Sony last month bought MGM and its more than 9,000 movie catalog to compliment its own proprietary media. That was followed by an announcement from Toshiba that it had garnered support from Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Studios. Then last week, Disney announced it would release its movies on the Blu-ray format, but will not close its doors to HD DVD.

"The general consensus is that before the [Toshiba] announcement, there was a bit of a standards war brewing," IdaRose Sylvester, a senior analyst at IDC, said. "It was thought that Blu-ray might get the leading edge with Sony's announcement. But now it's definitely a standards war for certain, which from all perspectives leads to more uncertainty."

Support from U.S. film studios may prove to be the deciding factor in the format battle, just as it did when the VHS standard won out over Sony's Betamax in the 1980s.

"In terms of who's going to win this, I think it's going to come to the studios," said Michelle Abraham, a senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR. "One of the reasons for buying such a device is to use it to watch prerecorded content. Whichever format has prerecorded content that a consumer wants to buy is going to get most of the device sales."

The technologies themselves both work with blue lasers, which have shorter wavelengths than the red lasers used in current DVD products, producing a sharper picture and allowing for more data storage. However, Blu-ray disks require completely new manufacturing plants, while HD-DVDs are more similar to today's DVDs and will be cheaper to manufacture. But Blu-ray has a slight capacity lead over HD DVD, says Abraham, and that could make a difference when it comes to improved features on DVDs like cast interviews and behind the scenes footage – something content providers treasure as momentum for DVD sales. All things considered, she believes both blue camps are on an even keel from a technology standpoint.

Equal standing is good news for semiconductor players, says Sylvester, because it allows them to begin work on both possibilities, knowing what's needed and that there won't be any earth-shaking changes when one a final standard is resolved. "Both standards have adopted the same set of codecs, so semiconductor manufacturers already know what set of codecs they need to have available in the future, regardless of which standard wins. We find that most semiconductor companies can happily take a neutral position."

Those that are not neutral include Philips Semiconductors, part of the Blu-ray group's Royal Philips Electronics, and other players that are part of a vertically integrated electronics company that has chosen its standard.

Still, the war is far from over. Blue laser DVD technology is still at a high price point; Hollywood is just beginning to take its stand; and consumers may not be as willing to dump their red laser DVD libraries and repurchase the same movies in blue form as the studios would like. And while both groups are promising their technology on shelves for next year's holidays, IDC believes blue laser DVD will be a minor niche technology through the 2008 timeframe.

"We all knew things were not over. The fat lady had not sung. And, of course, the fat lady has not stopped singing. There are more studios for both companies to go after. There are things other than content -- consumer acceptance, electronic manufacturing acceptance -- that will be interesting in the future," Sylvester concluded.

By: DocMemory
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