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NEXT-GENERATION HOME VIDEO (April 2004)
by ALEX LEEDS
a Film Comment online exclusive
Here we are, still enjoying the freshness and wonders of DVD, when the race has already begun to establish next-generation home video formats.
The reason is simple: governments around the world are forcing a transition from analog to digital television and from standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD). And where television goes, home video formats follow. Good as it is, especially compared to VHS, DVD is a hybrid (digital storage, analog output) that was not designed to accommodate high-definition material; it was always intended as an interim step on the road to HD.
Although only a small proportion of American homes (roughly 8 percent) are now equipped with the HDTV sets necessary to view it, high-definition television programming is increasingly plentiful. Almost all of us still watch analog television, but we do see the blurbs noting that many specific shows are simultaneously available in high definition.
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What is now only 8 percent of the 108 million American households with television sets is still a fairly significant number in absolute terms (almost 9 million), and that number will grow as we approach the end-of-2006 legal deadline for turning off analog TV signals in the United States. That deadline obviously won't be met, but there may be 25 million or so HD households by then. And that is a very significant market - for once you've experienced HD, it's very difficult to return to television as most of us know it today, including DVD. Just think of a picture that's five or more times sharper and clearer than what you see now, colors that are truer and deeper, and a screen much larger than the one you've tolerated all these years. As the announcers on ESPN sometimes say: "You have to see it. It's spectacular."
We'll avoid the highly technical engineering stuff for now, and simply outline the major contenders to succeed DVD, in order of actual or planned market launch in the U.S.
D-VHS (Digital VHS)
Already on the market in the U.S. and a few other countries, D-VHS was developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC), which also developed VHS. It's a tape-based format, which some consider "retro," but we're not going to debate the merits of tape versus disc here.
D-VHS can record analog, SD digital, and HD digital and is backward compatible with the VHS format (meaning it will also play VHS cassettes). Maximum high-definition recording capacity is currently four hours.
Some D-VHS VCRS include an additional "D-Theater" feature, designed to permit an extra layer of anticopying encryption on prerecorded HD cassettes. About 80 prerecorded D-Theater titles are currently available from five companies (Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, DreamWorks, Artisan, American Zoetrope), including Master and Commander, One From the Heart, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Mulholland Drive. Another 40 or so prerecorded HD D-VHS titles that do not use the D-Theater feature are available from HDNet and Wilderness Video.
Blu-ray Disc (Blu-ray or BD for short)
Developed by nine consumer electronics companies based in Japan, South Korea, and Europe, a preliminary Blu-ray model was launched by Sony in Japan last year to allow recording of high-definition television programming. Other format supporters, including Panasonic, have announced that they will launch their own models in Japan shortly. BD is an optical disc format that uses blue-laser technology for HD recording and playback, but will also incorporate the red-laser technology necessary to allow the playback of current DVDs.
Final BD specifications and capabilities have not yet been disclosed, although its developers say the format will allow the recording of "more than" four hours of HD material on a dual-layer disc. Blu-ray will also have computer uses, and Dell and Hewlett-Packard are now among its supporters. Sony has also dropped hints that BD may be used in the upcoming PlayStation 3 video-game system.
The U.S. launch of BD is tentatively scheduled for late 2005 or early 2006, according to Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, which promises to support the launch by releasing all of its new home video titles, along with some catalog titles, simultaneously on DVD and high-definition Blu-ray. You can expect Lawrence of Arabia, which Sony has been using for BD demonstration purposes, and, of course, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and so on. (As of this writing, in late April 2004, Sony is reportedly negotiating to acquire MGM, which would add another large film library to the Blu-ray lineup, including the never-ending James Bond series.)
HD DVD (High Definition DVD)
Developed by Toshiba and NEC, HD DVD (formerly known as AOD, for Advanced Optical Disc) has received preliminary approval from the DVD Forum, the international consortium that sets DVD standards and controls the DVD name. Like Blu-ray, HD DVD uses blue-laser technology for optical-disc HD recording and playback purposes but will also include red-laser technology to allow the playback of current DVDs. Otherwise, BD and HD DVD are incompatible technologies - their discs, for example, are totally different from each other, and from DVD discs as well.
Final HD DVD specifications and capabilities have not yet been determined, but preliminary information suggests that, at least initially, its HD recording capacity will be somewhat less than D-VHS and Blu-ray. On the other hand, it will cost less to produce prerecorded HD DVD discs than prerecorded BD discs, and HD DVD will require only adjustments in current disc replication equipment, while BD will require altogether new equipment.
Toshiba has been sending mixed signals about when it will launch HD DVD, although it is obviously under considerable pressure to accelerate its timing to coincide with the U.S. launch of Blu-ray. No movie studio has yet announced support for HD DVD, but there have been unconfirmed published reports that Warner Bros. is "leaning" toward it.
Other Contenders
While D-VHS, Blu-ray, and HD DVD are the obvious major contenders, they aren't the only possible high-definition home video formats. China has developed its own format, EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc), which it launched locally earlier this year with a few prerecorded titles. And Taiwan has just announced FVD (Forward Versatile Disc), with production scheduled to begin later this year. A few other possible contenders are also lurking in the background.
It's too early to predict where all of this will end up, and it may well be that no single home video format will prevail throughout the digital television world, as VHS and now DVD have done in the analog television world. Simply by force of government edict, for example, EVD may become the only format in China. And because of their different ancillary capabilities, tape and disc may co-exist - D-VHS is already used extensively in motion-picture post-production and for screening purposes, while Blu-ray can be used to store computer data.
There are a host of other open questions, too - whether to include compression technologies in addition to the MPEG-2 standard that's mandated for digital television in most of the world (Microsoft is pushing hard for inclusion of its Windows Media 9 technology); whether prerecorded HD titles will be "exclusive" to one format or another, and whether they will include HD "extras" of the type found on DVD; whether the source material or photographic style for some movies makes them unsuitable for high definition; whether the visual quality of high-definition video will stimulate the production of substantial amounts of original HD programming; whether numerous disputes concerning copy protection can be worked out between the copyright, consumer electronics, and computer industries; whether government will have to intrude into the process more than anyone would like; and so on.
All of this will have to get sorted out, somehow, or else bewildered consumers will simply say to hell with it. That would be a shame, but it's possible.
To be continuedˇ.
Alex Leeds is a writer specializing in new technology and its impact on how we experience the arts.
© 2004 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
