It seems that the format wars are certainly nowhere near over. There are those in the camp of digital services (both “no-def” and “hi-def”) and those who are still going after physical media. I’m thinking about this now because last night, I went out with my “posse” (I can’t even lift the box that the player comes in!) to get one of the Funai built Insignia Blu-ray players from Best Buy before it leaves the “sweet spot price” of $200, getting it over the PS3 that would have been double the price (to say nothing about how much power it chews through the month). So why did I go stand-alone player over the PS3?
I was thinking about going PS3 or AppleTV – they would have handled both the digital downloads and the physical media and the PS3 would have allowed me to play a game every now and again. But after thinking about it, the extra features would likely not have worked for me – they are just outside the “comfort of my rec room”. I don’t have time to play many games, I can download fast enough, but I don’t want to be tied to DRM if I can avoid it.
After much thinking (odd after surgery… but it seems to have been something that I could focus on), it occured to me that the format war that we are currently in, isn’t really a format war that will ever be won. Why? Because the different formats for delivery are going after segments of entertainment market that will likely not overlap often, if ever. The digital camp, especially for streaming no/low-fi media like YouTube is not even trying to compete with the AppleTV crowd. The former is likely looking at mobile distribution and the later is looking at rentals on demand with purchases that are locked into the hard drive (knowing that the DRM on just about ever media is cracked just about as soon as it hits the shelf). For the AppleTV crowd (and other download services/systems) there is full HD content available (in addition to the lower-fi stuff), just as there is for the traditional stand alone systems and if you have the bandwidth to download it and the storage pace on your drive to keep it, they are certainly attractive. These systems make the most sense where the consumer isn’t likely going to want to watch the content often (assuming the content is rental) or wanting to share (legally) between friends and family. Physical systems, on the other hand, don’t suffer any issues with sharing. So these formats are all about how you are going to use your media, and saying that there is a “war” here is quite silly.
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