When the long-running high definition DVD battle ended with a victory for Sony’s Blu-ray at the expense of Toshiba’s HD DVD, everyone took a huge sigh of relief. However, could it be that Blu-ray, along with DVD and all forms of physical media may already be on their way to an early death thanks to the increasing popularity of digital downloads.

Today saw Tech Radar look at the different sides of the argument, showing how some think that physical media still has a definite place in the market. Reasons cited for this continuing demand are the collectivity of box sets, and the convenience of having discs stored to watch more than once.

Kim Bayley, head of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), is backing physical discs, saying:

“When it comes to movies, image quality is important to consumers, hence the boom in sales of high-definition TVs and so our view is that the most exciting new format of the moment is Blu-ray.”

“It’s important that the video business pays attention to the lessons learned by the music industry with the advent of digital.”

Others meanwhile feel that the future is definitely digital, arguing that technology is moving so fast that the downloading of movies is forever becoming cheaper, more stable, and most importantly faster.

Gary Morris, founder of movie and games download service iLoaded said:

“In a couple of years time the average movie consumer will be able to download a Blu-ray quality high definition movie in around ten minutes,”

“Screen resolution improves, hard drive size gets bigger, screens get larger and feel more ergonomic, download speeds improve, codecs improve daily so you can make larger files smaller and so on,”

This argument isn’t new, with a chief scientist at audio bigwigs THX claiming back in March that Blu-ray was already a dead format walking. While the quotes were argued to have been taken out of context at the time by THX, downloads as the future is a convincing argument. I personally feel that within ten years, digital downloads will be the norm rather than the emerging craze.

This also raises another important question: Will the movie industry embrace change and the emergence of new distribution methods or try to fight tooth and claw for a failing business model like the music industry currently is?

I really hope the movie studios look at what is happening and jump on the bandwagon rather than try to shoot the wheels off it. Otherwise they will become just as despised as the major record labels currently are for their insistence on being in control.

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Entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm under High Definition Formats, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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