THE High Definition DVD

It appears that the Blu-ray camp has officially decided to declare a victory in the format wars, with every major report and trade rag pushing out that Warner Bros ( Time-Warner/AOL ) inked blu-ray support into future plans. It really feels like a Sony/Toshiba war with the various hollywood film-makers becoming the generals and subsequently directing thier minions to buy off on the BD licensing schemes... meaning what?

Blu-ray. BDR. BD. and new words being made up every day...
it wont matter much what its called since it will probably be what you will get anyhow.

Right now just about anyone with a DVD burner can make a DVD that plays on set-top for TV and computer PC's with no cost-to-implement other than DVD burner, blank DVD media and some DVD software, and a computer... simple right? wrong, too much stuff, too many steps and worse... Reality is that its flakey, does not always work with DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW whatall sub-formats and compatibility problems, expertise required. In a lot of important ways, the exisiting DVD failed. The fact is that most people dont have the DVD home movie functionality they were promised, they dont use it for slideshows of photos, the massive shift to use DVD as a media basically stayed in the rental and buying of hollywood movies. I'm happy to lose the whole word DVD and replace it with simply BD.

Hopefully BD will be like Hi-def on steroids.

A special form of the BD is in it's Movie Distribution feature-set that lets hollywood control how its content is released and if it can be duplicated or even backed-up... all this without constraining a basic usage that lets the BD owner essentially have a high-definition multimedia recorder, quite possibly as a central functionality for the Home Media Center products of our future. Plug your camera into your media center and hit record. Simple. Photo/video whatever have you, its there in a nice clear picture, finally, and its portable. Not a tech-geek thing, but a consumer item of value.

One massive benefit is the disc itself is available in a caddy that protects it... my kids have trashed many a DVD with your basic coffee-table scratches, and i am so very glad that those days will be gone... replaced by video of the vacation and wedding days, and being simple enough for grandparents to play on their big new TV with the Sony PS3 bought for the grandkids.

... and that scenario will probably play out tens of millions of times across the planet.

I see a trend where video games and movies and life itself merge into a high-energy visually rich must-have consumer adoption. My Hollywood friend: Christine Peters, Executive Producer says it well.

I already know a few dozen people with nice big TV's that display distorted width streched out crappy broadcast images -- they try with some desperation to be proud owners, but it isnt happening... people look 50lbs fatter - It's painful. These wide-screen TV owners dont even know what 16x9 is, but somehow they forked over $3-$5k for the dubious pleasure of ugly in flatscreen-land.

With PS3 and BD players (and a lot of film to BD re-releasing by studios), these poor widescreen owners will finally get what they thought they were supposed to get, what they were told they would get... and finally see what they were sold.

( cue the sunrise and violins ) ... its time is coming.