A lot of printer’s ink has been spilled and a lot of pixels have been lit reporting on the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war - a war fueled by arrogance and greed at Toshiba and Sony, who have demonstrated consumer-be-damned (and consumer-electronics-industry-be-damned) attitudes of monumental proportions.  You would think that Sony, at least, would have learned from the Betamax / VHS video tape war of a generation ago, especially since it was a war that Sony lost.  Guess not. 

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Most consumers have not been anxious to gamble on one competing format or the other, especially given the high (Toshiba) and very high (Sony) prices of these products.  Of course, if consumers had been interested, there wouldn’t have been enough players in the stores to satisfy them.  This has been one of the most seriously bungled introductions of a (potentially) major product category in consumer electronics history, starting with a shortage of the blue laser diodes at the heart of the playback head and a boot-up for early HD DVDs that was so slow you could feel your whiskers grow between the time you pushed the PLAY button and when the opening credits of your movie started.  The slow development of encryption algorithms insisted upon by Hollywood studios obsessed with content protection didn’t help either.

Not everyone in the consumer electronics industry was as blind to the consequences of a new format war as the decision-makers at Sony and Toshiba.  In late 2005, a variety of players were working hard to bring Sony and Toshiba together on a common format.  That was Plan A, and it was a consummation devoutly to be wished.  No luck.

Plan B was to make dual-format players that would be able to play HD discs of either format.  If your player could play discs of either format, there would be no need to wait for the market to settle on one format or the other.  Many manufacturers have talked about making dual-format players and LG Electronics will announce one at CES, with others likely.  But cost and complexity have kept Plan B from clearing the battlefield.

Now, Warner Brothers is planning to introduce at CES a single disc, called Total HD, which can contain a film or other programming in both formats and can play it back in both Blu-ray and HD DVD players, reports Richard Siklos in today’s New York Times.  That’s Plan C.   For it to work, Warner Brothers and parent company Time Warner will have to obtain the support of retailers and will have to seduce rival studios - many of which support one of the two formats exclusively - into making their film and television libraries available in both formats.  Otherwise, retailers may now have to stock four versions of a film: HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVD and Total HD.

Time Warner president Jeffrey L. Bewkes believes the Total HD disc has a better chance of catching on than dual-format players, Siklos reported.  Warner-sponsored research suggests consumers would pay several dollars more than current HD DVDs. Irynne MacKay, senior VP for entertainment products at Circuit City, said she supported the new format because it would make the buying decision easier for consumers.

So, will Plan C work?  Before it does, there are lots of recalcitrant ducks to line up in a row.  Next week at CES, we’ll be listening hard to how those ducks quack.