Consumers and Hollywood alike will rejoice at the idea of avoiding yet another audio-video format war. The VHS versus Beta war is the most famous however the more recent SACD versus DVD-Audio format war left no winner standing at the end of the battle. Consumers simply don’t want to invest in a format that could up-up and away on them – leaving them with a poor investment in equipment and software.

Consumer demand for a new HDTV capable disc will be incredibly strong. HDTVs are selling according to Consumer Electronics Association numbers, at the rate of over 1,000,000 sets per month. Rumors in the retail world suggest the prices of “flat” TVs are due to dip again this summer making the market even bigger. Each person with an HDTV set quickly learns once it is installed and programmed, that there is only so much HDTV content available to them at any given time. An HDTV digital video recorder (DVR) is one solution consumers are using now to archive HDTV yet the idea of collecting movies (and someday music) on an ultra-high resolution format is going to be very tempting indeed.

Hollywood is also salivating at the idea of reselling their back catalog movies all over again. The cost to make a movie is paid up front and converting a movie from its archived master into a format that would go on an HD capable disc is pretty easy. The video is often archived on D5 tape and requires a downconversion to get it to 1080i or 720p – assuming those would be the format that the new format would use. Perhaps the new disc would go for the superior 1080p format? The audio mix for surround sound is already made for most movies released after 1990. All that is needed is some remixing for home audio systems as opposed to theatrical audio systems. In the case that the remix has already been done for a DVD release, it makes creating a new HD disc even easier.

All is not perfect however with HD discs even if both sides decide to work together. Hollywood hasn’t signed off on the copy protection schemes being used by either Blu-ray or HD-DVD. The major movie studios are rightfully concerned about piracy of such high resolution copies of their movies. Right now the bandwidth needed to store or send an HDTV movie over the Internet simply makes the process impractical but bandwidth will increase and hard drives will get bigger and cheaper. It is essential to all sides, including the computer companies who want so very badly to be in the movie business – that the powers that be get the copy protection right on this format. If they don’t within days of a new HDTV release, copies will be for sale on the streets of China for $2 a piece and with the treat of that malady – Hollywood will drag its feet.

While piracy is a scary possibility, the idea of the studios selling everyone all of their movies all over again will be more compelling considering the billions upon billions of dollars per year in sales this new format could bring the studios. Factor in the hardware manufacturers, the computer companies and every consumer with an HDTV who all want to see the project fly and you have the makings of the next big audio-video hit.

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