HD DVD offensive starting to crack, Blu-ray gets ammo
In the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, HD DVD proponents have been counting on a Holiday 2005 launch to get a leg up on Sony, whose Blu-ray spec isn't expected to materialize before mid-2006. Now, however, it looks like the launch will be less of a coup than expected. According to the Wall Street Journal, the studios who had planned to embrace HD DVD this holiday season are scaling back their plans to have HD DVD movies on shelves. Paramount Pictures, for instance, has nixed their plans for holiday releases entirely, although they have not indicated that they are bailing out of HD DVD altogether. NBC Universal will be releasing some HD DVD titles, but they have scaled their release back 25 percent. As of today, no other HD DVD titles have been announced.
The Journal also speculates that Toshiba will likely be the only company to bring a HD DVD player to market during the holiday season, and with an expected price circa US$1,000, it's unclear how many will fly off shelves immediately. If the launch is only accompanied by 12 titles from NBC Universal, most people will play the waiting game.
Sony, Disney, and now News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox have all committed to Blu-ray, and have no plans to sell HD DVD products. Sony gained Twentieth Century Fox just last week when the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) reportedly agreed to add watermarking technology to the spec. This has kicked off a round of sniping between Blu-ray and HD DVD proponents over which solution is more secure. The debate is a bit strange because the two solutions use largely the exact same core tech, namely the Advanced Access Content System (AACS).
Blu-ray's latest additions in the security department build upon AACS, and give Blu-ray the appearance of being more secure. BD+ is a dynamic encryption scheme that allows for changing encryption schemes midstream. Should the encryption be cracked, the BDA can update the encryption scheme and put it on all new discs, thus preventing a single crack from opening up the entire BD spec for the duration of its lifetime. The lack of a dynamic encryption model is what made DeCSS so disastrous in the industry's eyes: once CSS was cracked, all DVDs from then on were crackable.
"ROM-Mark," another new addition, will be built into all ROM-producing devices, and prevent the mass counterfeiting of content in the event that a watermark is detected. Through licensing, the BDA believes that it can eliminate the possibility of mass producing BD-ROMs without authorization.
The HD DVD consortium is likely caught off guard by these two new security features. Last week when it learned of Twentieth Century Fox's decision to go with Blu-ray, which was couched primarily in terms of security features, the HD DVD guys were left scratching their heads, as was evident from their comments almost two weeks ago:
"Today's announcement by 20th Century Fox regarding its support of the Blu-ray Disc format is surprising and misleading in terms of which format provides for more robust copy protection. The content protection system of HD DVD provides an equivalent level of security as the system advocated by Fox for Blu-Ray. We also believe the Blu-Ray disc format and proposed copy protection system may result in playability and reliability issues for the consumer."
With BD+ and ROM-Mark, the BDA and Sony have added a powerful one-two punch to Blu-ray's arsenal. Dare I say it, but I think Blu-ray has HD DVD on the ropes.
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