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Why Neil Young Is Wrong To Go With Blu-Ray Only

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The biggest running joke is all of rock music, of course, has become the imminent release of the next Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy which is due to come out, either any day now or never. Even Syd Barrett was able to make a couple of solo albums after he went crazy, Axl.

However, Neil Young fans know that the wait for Chinese Democracy is nothing compared for how we’ve been waiting for Archives, the career-spanning box set that he’s been promising since — shit — Guns N’ Roses was just becoming the biggest band on the planet. We’ve been waiting for so long that his length of time that Archives can cover has actually doubled.

While some performance CDs have been released (the awesome Live at the Fillmore East and the not quite as awesome Live at Massey Hall, the bulk of the material assumed to be on Archives has only been available on bootlegs. Well, yesterday, Neil has made his latest announcement concerning Archives. The first 10 discs are coming out this fall. Whoo-hoo! On Blu-Ray. D’oh!

So despite the fact that I’ve been looking forward to this for nearly 20 years, right now I’m kinda disappointed.

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Trust: The Real Loser In the HD-DVD/BluRay Battle

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For those of us who make a habit of predicting the future, the recent demise of HD-DVD was an inevitability. Press reports indicated that a mere 600,000 standalone units had been sold to consumers. My notes from last year’s SXSW festival indicate that half a million total HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players were in the market — obviously, sales didn’t skyrocket. After all the fanfare and hype, the consumer shrugged.

Of course, the consumer — or that portion of consumers who invested in HD-DVD technology — lost. This does not bode well for the motion picture industry, and you’ve got to wonder who will be fired for failing to gauge the mood of the DVD-purchasing public. Just as many people predicted the disaster of the Iraq war, many of us saw how this made-up DVD format war would end.
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Goodbye, HD-DVD, I Never Knew You

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I’d like to bid farewell to the HD-DVD format, which died a quick death this week. Was it any good?

You see, I was one of the millions of consumers who stayed on the sidelines while HD-DVD fought it out with Blu-Ray for high-definition digital supremacy. Because I knew that this day was inevitable, I stayed away from both formats. So I never actually saw an HD-DVD movie. Not even in a demonstration.

After all, I’d already lived through this movie once before: only it was called Beta vs. VHS. I watched while a lot of smart people got burnt by picking the wrong format, so I figured that I didn’t need to see the remake.

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The False War: HD DVD versus Blu Ray

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Nothing says the dog days of summer like the first Christmas display of the season. Costco is already gearing up for the holiday season — my first glimpse of Santa-mania came in the form of a ribbon display. Presumably, due to extensive market research, someone knows that the first thing consumers purchase for the impending holidays is ribbon to tie around the merrily wrapped packages.

You have wonder, if only a little bit.

The other big sign of the upcoming season comes in the forms of headlines: “Consumers Urged to Pick New DVD Format” or “Shoppers to choose which high-def DVD format lives”. Makes you feel both helpless and powerful, doesn’t it?
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My Problem With The Pew High-Tech Survey

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A lot of hay was made yesterday about a wide-reaching survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. For example, one of the things that got serious play was that about half of the people out there still don’t live their lives around high-tech products.

Instead, I guess, they are living their lives around such mundane things as their jobs, their churches, their families and so forth. Then the survey broke down the actual users into sub-groups, and explained various things about the sub-groups. It was all very interesting and informative, and then I got to the very end . . .

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HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, and The Problem With Wal-Mart

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So, yeah, wow, it’s 2007 and we’re having format wars. Hmm, that’s not entirely true. We, the people, are not a war at all. In face, we, the people, don’t care. The people who care, who desperately care, are the businesses who have staked the ground on either the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray side of the fence. To them, the battles and strategy matter very much. It’s almost like they’re holding a modern war in another century.

I’m doing the masochist thing at this year’s SXSWi (as augmented by the film festival) and attending all of the “The Future of…” panels. Sure, it’s hard to take “The Future of Online Video” seriously, when nascent barely begins to describe the phenomenon, but when the panel is about The Future of DVDs, well, now you have my attention. The future of DVD, as we all know, is keeping way too many media executives awake at night to count.

Not that you’d know it from this panel.
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The High-Definition Problem

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As our esteemed nation moves closer and closer to a high-definition world, certain perils are being exposed. Never mind that you’ll see every wrinkle and line. Don’t worry that pimples will be seen where flawless skin once reigned. There are real problems: the one industry that has arguably done more than any other to drive consumer acceptance of new technology is issuing warnings against HD:

Producers are taking steps to hide the imperfections. Some shots are lit differently, while some actors simply are not shot at certain angles, or are getting cosmetic surgery, or seeking expert grooming.

“The biggest problem is razor burn,” said Stormy Daniels, an actress, writer and director.

Ms. Daniels is also a skeptic. “I’m not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD,” she said.

In other news, Sony has decided to go porn-free with its Blu-Ray product. Apparently mass-producing porn violates long-standing company policy. Sure, the decision will drive producers to other formats, but, hey, policy is policy.

Never let it be said that we don’t bring you all the news you need.

Why The HD-DVD / Blu-Ray Wars Are Not Over

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documentary_dvd_mission_accomplished.jpg After no doubt unfurling a huge banner in its offices that said “Mission Accomplished,” the Blu-ray Disc Association has declared that major combat operations in the Hi Def DVD Wars are over, and Blu-ray is the victor.

Oh yeah? Sorry, Blu-ray Disc Association, but I think that you are obviously suffering from an extreme case of “premature evictoration:” the declaration of a victory long before your opponent has actually been vanquished. As if just saying you won makes it so.

Sure, some of your backers might buy your load of B.S. — because you’re saying what they desperately need to hear — but it’s entirely possible that three-four years from now, you’ll still be bogged down in the trenches, begging for a surge in advertising dollars that will hopefully spur sales.

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Microsoft Goes The Last Few Feet

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We rag on Microsoft a lot around here. Zune, particularly, has come in for a lot of pre-sale criticism from these quarters. So we should praise them when they do something right. And today’s announcement that they have set up a deal with several studios to offer downloads directly to their Xbox Live service in just a couple of weeks smacks a whole hell of a lot of doing things right.

It’s an idea that only those who instinctively dislike everything Microsoft does could hate.

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Blu-Ray, HD-DVD — Taking Sides Is A Sign That The Studios Are Focusing On The Wrong Problem

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So, I’m out for an evening of fun, and the conversation rapidly turns to digital media. A woman leans forward, her hand wrapped around her frou-frou drink and says, “Our studio is going with Blu-Ray. Do you think that’s a mistake?”

Yes, Virginia, I do. I think it’s short-sighted, in this day and age, for a major motion picture studio to lock itself into a single format. Sure, Hollywood has been spoiling for a format war since the bruising battles between Beta and VHS, but times have changed, and format exclusivity is a potential death knell for a studio’s DVD business — and let’s face it, with DVD sales going the way they are (that would be down), the motion picture industry doesn’t need more barriers between it and consumer dollars.
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