Consumers will avoid Beta-VHS battle with machine playing all formats
Marke Andrews
Sun
Frank Lee of LG Electronics shows off the company’ new Super Multi Blue Player, which is debuting in Canada exclusively for a month at Future Shop outlets beginning on March 2. Its list price will be $1,499. Photograph by : Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
A truce could be at hand in the war between digital formats when a DVD player that handles both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD hits Canadian stores March 2.
The dispute between the two formats harkens back to the great 1980s tilt between VHS and Beta video, which left Beta buyers with useless products.
The Super Multi Blue Player from LG Electronics, a global company with head offices in South Korea, will debut on March 2 in Canada and the U.S. — and nowhere else until at least the summer. The machine, which plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs, will be available in Canada only at Future Shop stores for the first month. Other retail outlets will get the machine, which has a list price of $1,499, in April.
“We don’t want to dictate to consumers one technology over the other,” said Frank Lee, public relations manager for LG Electronics Canada, during a Vancouver demonstration of the DVD player with LG’s 47-inch LCD high-definition television and an LG surround-sound system. “This machine will play every format.”
The Super Multi Blue Player reads DVD, CD and HD-DVD-ROM formats. It will also write to a CD.
Using 1080p plasma technology, the picture quality is stunning. Lee and Andrew Barrett, vice-president of marketing for LG Electronics Canada, played discs in both formats — a Blue-ray DVD of the animated movie Ice Age and a HD DVD of Batman Begins — and then popped in an Ice Age disc with 1080i technology, considered state-of-the-art until 1080p came along. The difference was like night and day. The 1080i disc appeared dark, and features on the animals’ fur and feathers were indistinct compared to the clear images of the the 1080p.
Because of the clash between Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, consumers have been reluctant to buy hi-def DVD players and DVD movies for them, afraid of investing in a big-ticket purchase of what may end up being an obsolete technology.
Up until now, Blu-ray appeared to have the edge in the war. Seven of the eight biggest Hollywood studios committed to making their movies in the Blu-ray format, and five of those seven committed exclusively to Blu-ray. These seven studios account for 82 per cent of the movie titles available.
According to figures supplied by cduniverse.com, 134 titles are currently available in Blu-ray form, 114 in HD DVD, and 58 are available in both formats.
That’s all moot with a machine like the Super Multi Blue Player.
The creation of a dual-play system may be a relief to the studios, who were facing the same quandary as the consumer over choosing a possibly redundant format, only with a lot more at stake.
Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders has called the machine “a great first step towards resolving consumer confusion and uncertainty.”
Lee expects other manufacturers to come up with dual-format machines like the Super Multi Blue Player, which was in development for more than two years.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007