HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray: customers to be screwed

I should have known that there was more to the HD-DVD / Blu-ray debate than meets the eye. Increasingly, it’s becoming clear that the media industry is hell-bent on alienating its customers. Now I’m beginning to learn that the real idea behind these two new media is not to allow customers access to higher quality video at all: indeed, we could find that we buy a disc and then are allowed to view it just a couple of times. And I thought the Napster subscription service was a crap idea.

The present and future of post production business and technology » When a good format “wins” for all the wrong reasons

Although I’m definitely in the group of people that sees Blu-ray as the undoubtedly superior technology of the two high density optical disc competitors, and should be happy that the tide seems to be turning toward Blu-ray ‘winning’ the war before a shot is fired or product released, it seems the reason Paramount and Warner Bros ‘defected’ to Blu-ray was because of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) supported in that format is much more restrictive than for HD DVD.

Both formats support Advanced Access Content System (AACS) as the primary DRM and Blu-ray has two additional DRM control agents included. However the point of difference, and the reason Bill Gates said Blu-ray was ‘anti consumer’ is because HD DVD mandates that all discs support Managed Copy, while Blu-ray leaves the option to activate Managed Copy to individual disc authors “

Possibly related:

• Double possessive
• Godcasting
• DVDs