THX chief scientist Laurie Fincham has been quoted as saying that despite its victory over HD DVD, Blu-ray will not become the next standard in the home entertainment market.
“Personally, I think it’s too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only become interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory. Do we really need another spinning format?” Fincham is quoted in the Home Cinema Choice Magazine.
“In the future I want to be able to carry four to five movies around with me in a wallet, or walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it’s all about having zero inventory. I don’t want to take up shelf space with dozens of HD movies.”
“By the time Blu-ray really finds a mass market, we will have 128GB cards. I would guess that getting studios to supply movies on media cards, or offer downloads, will be a lot easier than getting them to sign up to support a disc format,” he concluded.
Result for: Flash
The UK-based company Velocix (formerly known as CacheLogic), has announced that beginning today it will be “offering live Streaming television content with a hybrid P2P live streaming client.”
So far live streaming has been a challenge to content providers as the audience for live streaming events are all trying to access the video simultaneously, putting a strain on resources.
The popular IPTV platform Joost recently made an attempt to live stream some NCAA “March Madness” basketball games via a partnership with CBS but “connections to CBS feeds were reported to have been dropped at inopportune periods.”
Velocix, on the other hand, offers a BitTorrent-compatible hybrid P2P client “which turns each viewer into a sort of peer host for additional viewers.” The streams are then available in Flash format or Windows Media format.
The company also says it has made deals with the BBC and Babelgum as well as Bollywood.tv, and Chic.tv.
Result for: Flash
Although the format has been technically dead for over a month, HD DVD is now officially dead, as the HD DVD Promotion Group has formally dissolved itself, marking a quiet end to the High Definition format.
After Toshiba’s decision last month to abandon the format, other big players involved have all pulled out as well, including Microsoft, Universal Studios, Paramount Studios and more recently, Best Buy.
The Promotion group, the organization in charge of persuading the world to adopt HD DVD, has now voted to disband, leaving HD DVD and its branding to the DVD Forum.
The question still remains however if the world will go Blu or move to flash memory and HD downloads as internet speeds get faster and flash capacities get larger.
