Kottke has mentioned that Netflix will be discontinuing their HDDVD disks in favor of Bluray as the preferred format. This deals yet another blow to HDDVD who has lost many studio deals to Bluray and seen multiple large corporations (including BestBuy and Dell) choose Bluray support over HDDVD. But you may be hearing this and thinking “Format What?” If so, dear friend, read on and I’ll tell you a tale of fierce warriors in a battle for technological superiority, and a trump card that just might render all formats pointless.

If you happen to be a dinosaur unlike your’s truly and you were around during the era when videotapes where just starting to gain some traction you might remember a format put out by Sony called Betamax. The basic idea by Sony was that if everyone bought Betamax tapes they would corner the market and get a piece of every video sold. The problem was Betamax tapes were completely incompatible with videotapes and vice-versa, so a consumer had to buy a special type of player to play one or the other. This gets at the heart of what a format war is. The consumers and the general public have to decide on a “standard” for a product to be developed on. DVD took the scene with relatively easy transition. But today we have high-definition TV sets with such high resolutions that standard DVDs look just a bit blurry and the move is toward something that offers a clearer picture.

Toshiba released High Definition DVD players in March of 2006 for a low price of ~$1000 (and they were only available in Japan). Of course the price has come down considerably during that time and they are more widely available, but it is still difficult to find a good player for less than $200, and of course the disks are also a premium at $25-$30 a piece.

Meanwhile Sony was developing a new way of reading high format disks using blue lasers called Bluray. A player was finally introduced in June of 2006. Naturally the formats were completely incompatible with each other and because of the high cost of entry most consumers continued to simply choose DVDs instead of being stuck with a dead format a few years down the road. We have on our hands now a bonafide format war.

The biggest hurdle for either format was going to be adoption by the movie studios. Afterall, they are the ones putting out the disks that people would ultimately want to buy and if Jane Doe’s favorite chick flick is only available in Bluray perhaps that would persuade her to choose a side. A few of the studios like Universal and Paramount initially supported both formats, whereas others like Fox and (surprise) Sony stuck with a single format. Slowly that weight has shifted and now 7 out of the 8 studios support Bluray including many of the major corporations like Dell and HP that could include players in their computer lines. News like that of Netflix removing HDDVD support from its line is becoming common these days and it seems apparent that HDDVD will likely not survive and Bluray just might be the format of choice for the coming years.

But is there another option? Apple Inc. has been pushing their Apple TV device that streams media directly from iTunes via the internet. Netflix offers a “Watch Now” service that allows any computer to view a movie on demand. Many of these services are starting to see the advantage of offering high definition via the web. No specific player is needed, thus no war over competing formats. Of course the files are large but with the spreading availability of broadband a movie can start playing in as little as a few minutes. This sort of “on-demand” technology will play a large part in the possible exclusion of particular formats or devices all together. It removes the high cost of entry for the consumer and allows both the providers and the consumers a winning situation. The battle is taking a twist and it will be interesting to see how relevant either Bluray or HD-DVD will be in the coming years.