Consumers will be the winners after the DVD dust settles
It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that 2008 is set to be the year Hollywood and consumers go head to head over how we get to watch its output and what we can do with it afterwards. Discussions of the quality of the "product" itself can be left to another forum - after all, with releases like the fourth Indie Jones movie, a Smurfs flick and even a remake of Footloose to look forward to, what can we possibly add here?
As anyone who's been on this site before will know all too well, the tedious marketing antagonism that is the so-called high-definition format war has to wind up sooner or later, and we're betting - more accurately, praying - that the armistice will come this year.
Whichever side on the largely Japanese-directed campaign (whether it's Blu-ray or HD DVD) comes out smelling of roses, the man or woman in the street is bound to be the real winner and can look forward to the prices of high-definition DVD players tumbling.
Lest we forget, when the dust settles and studios start pumping out proper quantities of cheap discs of one stripe or the other (it'll be Blu-ray, by the way - just so you know) we'll finally be able to enjoy the much-trumpeted high-def son et lumière without worrying about the Betamax pratfall of having backed a donkey.
Biggest, best and strangest
One piece of kit being shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week has been a gargantuan plasma television from Panasonic Japan that kicks sand in the face of the previous Godzillas of the flat TV arena. It seems the increasingly ridiculous micturating contest to see who has the biggest screen has been brought to a head by a 150-inch behemoth that is big enough to show a life-size adult human and God knows how many Smurfs.
Sharp's 108-incher doesn't stand a chance against Panasonic's monster
Given the 42-inch gap between Panny's showboater and the last record holder - a 108-incher from Sharp - we can't see any of the Far-Eastern giants bothering to tilt at this windmill for quite some time.
At the other end of the scale, Polaroid Japan has taken aim at the home cinema market in a rather different fashion, with an old-school portable DVD player that incorporates a dock for video-friendly iPods. However, the 8.5-inch screen on the ¥28,000 (£130) DPJ-08580B (couldn't they think of a name?) is a scant 5 inches larger across the diagonal than that on an iPod touch, which provokes a little scepticism about Polaroid selling many to Apple fans.
Polaroid's DVD player can be attached to the back of a car headrest to pacify kids on long car journeys
Still, the player attaches to the back of a car headrest and includes two audio output sockets for plugging in dual headphones, so a few hours of quiet on family car journeys isn't altogether out of the question, assuming an iPod loaded with movies.
Cracking down on cams
Talk of copying films to a portable device for viewing on the go inevitably raises the old piracy questions: what constitutes a performance, is it ok for me to rip DVDs from my own collection, and are Pirate Bay downloads kosher too?
Admittedly, that last one's a little obvious, which is why a pair of Japanese companies are collaborating to crack down on at least one source of illegal P2P movie downloads, albeit an odd one.
The NHK-Mitsubishi copy protection plan: it's all perfectly simple if you understand Japanese
Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, and Mitsubishi have developed a watermarking system that plugs into digital cinema setups to apply an invisible code that is unique to each showing of each film in any cinema. Their target? Those peculiar individuals who use handheld video cameras to film copies of new movies direct from the cinema screen for distribution online.
The fact that their generally atrocious quality means no one with any interest in actually enjoying a particular film bothers to watch such "cams" doesn't seem to bother the combined might of two of Japan's finest.
Perhaps someone should explain that the cam copiers mostly do it to gain kudos for being first off the mark after a new release - from their equally sad peers. Mind you, that would require equal doses of realism and common sense - two qualities that are in short supply among media giants right now.
J Mark Lytle
Tuesday January 8 2008
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that 2008 is set to be the year Hollywood and consumers go head to head over how we get to watch its output and what we can do with it afterwards. Discussions of the quality of the "product" itself can be left to another forum - after all, with releases like the fourth Indie Jones movie, a Smurfs flick and even a remake of Footloose to look forward to, what can we possibly add here?
As anyone who's been on this site before will know all too well, the tedious marketing antagonism that is the so-called high-definition format war has to wind up sooner or later, and we're betting - more accurately, praying - that the armistice will come this year.
Whichever side on the largely Japanese-directed campaign (whether it's Blu-ray or HD DVD) comes out smelling of roses, the man or woman in the street is bound to be the real winner and can look forward to the prices of high-definition DVD players tumbling.
Lest we forget, when the dust settles and studios start pumping out proper quantities of cheap discs of one stripe or the other (it'll be Blu-ray, by the way - just so you know) we'll finally be able to enjoy the much-trumpeted high-def son et lumière without worrying about the Betamax pratfall of having backed a donkey.
Biggest, best and strangest
One piece of kit being shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week has been a gargantuan plasma television from Panasonic Japan that kicks sand in the face of the previous Godzillas of the flat TV arena. It seems the increasingly ridiculous micturating contest to see who has the biggest screen has been brought to a head by a 150-inch behemoth that is big enough to show a life-size adult human and God knows how many Smurfs.
Given the 42-inch gap between Panny's showboater and the last record holder - a 108-incher from Sharp - we can't see any of the Far-Eastern giants bothering to tilt at this windmill for quite some time.
At the other end of the scale, Polaroid Japan has taken aim at the home cinema market in a rather different fashion, with an old-school portable DVD player that incorporates a dock for video-friendly iPods. However, the 8.5-inch screen on the ¥28,000 (£130) DPJ-08580B (couldn't they think of a name?) is a scant 5 inches larger across the diagonal than that on an iPod touch, which provokes a little scepticism about Polaroid selling many to Apple fans.
Still, the player attaches to the back of a car headrest and includes two audio output sockets for plugging in dual headphones, so a few hours of quiet on family car journeys isn't altogether out of the question, assuming an iPod loaded with movies.
Cracking down on cams
Talk of copying films to a portable device for viewing on the go inevitably raises the old piracy questions: what constitutes a performance, is it ok for me to rip DVDs from my own collection, and are Pirate Bay downloads kosher too?
Admittedly, that last one's a little obvious, which is why a pair of Japanese companies are collaborating to crack down on at least one source of illegal P2P movie downloads, albeit an odd one.
The NHK-Mitsubishi copy protection plan: it's all perfectly simple if you understand Japanese
Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, and Mitsubishi have developed a watermarking system that plugs into digital cinema setups to apply an invisible code that is unique to each showing of each film in any cinema. Their target? Those peculiar individuals who use handheld video cameras to film copies of new movies direct from the cinema screen for distribution online.
The fact that their generally atrocious quality means no one with any interest in actually enjoying a particular film bothers to watch such "cams" doesn't seem to bother the combined might of two of Japan's finest.
Perhaps someone should explain that the cam copiers mostly do it to gain kudos for being first off the mark after a new release - from their equally sad peers. Mind you, that would require equal doses of realism and common sense - two qualities that are in short supply among media giants right now.
J Mark Lytle
Tuesday January 8 2008
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
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