Interview With Amir
Dear Gary:
Just got the latest issue (Romance And Cigarettes on the cover...and by the way...WHAT A COVER!).
I have to say that in-depth interviews like the one with Amir Majidimehr are primary among the reasons why I keep my subscription to Widescreen Review. Bravo!
Obviously, the “war” is over, and the Blu side “won,” but I find Amir’s views questioning the ability for either side to supplant standard-definition DVD to be spot on with my own. I have two HD DVD players, and a Blu-ray Disc® player, so I would have to be called “purple.” But for me it is all about content, and at the time of my purchases, the only way to get all the films that I wanted was to get two players. Such is life in a format war.
But again, I think Amir correctly points out that with the exception of the enthusiast population, selling a new format on quality was not really going to work in terms of establishing a new mass-market consumer format. VHS to DVD was huge, but to the average guy, DVD to high-definition media was not so huge. And lack of backwards compatibility with the massive installed base of SD DVD machines is going to be insurmountable to the Blu-ray Disc side unless they decide to throw a DVD in the box with every Blu-ray Disc. As much as I maybe did not like dual-sided HD DVD discs, that was one potential advantage that the red team had in their appeal to the non-enthusiast market. Of course, non-enthusiasts do nothing when confronted with a format war...
As I have commented to my enthusiast friends... “All Hail
Blu-ray Disc...the new LaserDisc!” Maybe that is okay, as long as the studios produce the films we want on high-definition media, but niches have a way of staying niches, meaning that studios may or may not feel a great deal of incentive to release their films on Blu-ray Disc for a very limited potential audience.
Anyway, thanks for a great issue. Hopefully, you can get a few follow-up comments from Amir now that things are decided. It was pretty apparent from his comments that after Warner’s deal, he really could see the writing on the wall.
Brian Leduc
New Contributing Editor Amir Majidimehr Comments:
Thank you for the kind words regarding the interview. As you read between the lines, the Warner move was indeed decisive, causing the format war to dissipate quickly. I was pleased to see Toshiba take quick action so that we can put this era behind us and move on to more exciting things. On that front, I do not consider this a closed book, but rather, another chapter in the ongoing transformation of digital distribution of content to consumers. Melting plastic to create shiny discs and shipping it on trucks will one day seem as strange as LPs are to my children, who have never seen one in real life! For now, though, we do have a high-quality format, which should be cause for celebration among enthusiasts to drive our ever-more-capable displays. It is great that so many companies are spending so many resources to make us enjoy such content even more!
Editor-In-Chief and Publisher Gary Reber Comments: I also applaud Toshiba’s acknowledgement as the loser in the format war. I respect the HD DVD Promotion Group’s efforts to offer a cost-performance value format that included the dual-sided HD DVD/DVD option to create a single disc that plays in all legacy DVD players and in HD DVD players. But that is now not an option and will be a challenge for the Blu-ray Disc Association to overcome those who are “stuck in DVD land.” Now that a single format is what we will have going forward, we will be looking to the manufacturers and content providers to deliver on the FULL promise of Blu-ray Disc. It means essentially starting from fresh with new players and content that FULLY supports the FULL standard.
I do believe that consumers with 1080p high-definition displays will easily be able to discern significant performance differences with Blu-ray Disc compared to standard-definition DVD. The education must now begin to assure success for full high-definition performance.
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