While the late months of 2006 will act as witness to the true genesis of the next-generation console wars, there is another war looming within the next few months. It is the dawn of the Format War. The days of the standard DVD have begun to wane. The format has served us well, but will soon be faded into the background of disc formats.
On the horizon comes the “next-gen” disc formats, comprised of the two warring parties: HD DVD (backed by Microsoft and Toshiba, among others) and Blu-Ray (backed by Sony, among others).
These new disc formats will offer a substantial increase to the amount of space a single disc can hold. HD DVD can hold 15GB on a single layer disc and 30GB on a dual layer disc, with a 45GB triple layer disc in development. The Blu-Ray, on the other hand, will hold 25GB on a single layer disc, 50GB on a dual layer disc and 100Gb on a four layer disc. The increased capacity is related to the density on which the disc is written.
HD DVD and Blu-Ray will be read using a 405nm wavelength light (blue-violet) as opposed to the 650nm and 780nm of DVDs and CDs respectively. The smaller wavelength will allow the disc to be read in a much smaller area, meaning data can be written onto a disc with an increased density. While HD DVD’s have already dived into the market - with a somewhat stagnant reception due to high prices - Sony will be sitting on the sidelines until their May 23rd release of Blu-Ray. The two formats have garnered equal support from an equal number of movie publishers, and there are already announcements for titles to launch on HD DVD or Blu-Ray. Plans are made to include regular DVD versions of films as well as their High Definition counterparts on a single, multi-layered disc, in an effort to help the segue for consumers.
Moreover, LG announced that they will be manufacturing a DVD player that will run both HD DVD and Blu-Ray, due to the companies uncertainty over which version will triumph in the marketplace. Next generation DVD players will also be backwards compatible with current DVD’s and CD’s, again, to help customers segue into the new format (a la VCR/DVD combos).
The biggest concern to all the pirates out there is the watermarking system of copy protection. Through the entirety of the film, an inaudible noise will be playing overlayed with the soundtrack. HD DVD and Blu-Ray players will use the coding generated by this inaudible noise to verify the authenticity of the disc. Any disc deemed to be a counterfit rip, or a camera capture from a cinema, will not be played in any standard high definition player. There has also been discussion about online monitoring of these players that will lock any system that attempts to view a disc that is:
Possesses a foreign region code
A counterfeit copy of a retail film
Although this method will likely be cracked over time, there are rumours about a varying encryption that will allow companies to use a different encryption on newer media once the original encryption is cracked, thus creating an on-going game of “crack that safeguard” for the digital underground.