Digital Home Thoughts: Inside Microsoft's decision to back HD DVD

"Few were surprised when Microsoft (along with Intel) announced that they would back HD DVD over Blu-ray. While Microsoft's stance on the next-generation of optical storage media was officially neutral, their close working relationship with Toshiba led us to suspect that HD DVD would get the nod. The interesting question is, why? It has been said that Microsoft simply wouldn't back something put out by Sony, but that argument doesn't have traction. First, Microsoft's VC-1 video codec is supported by both Blu-ray and HD DVD; there's no strategic edge there to speak of. Additionally, over-emphasizing the competition between the PlayStation and the Xbox ignores the fact that Sony and Microsoft have a substantial working relationship. Witness Sony's line of Vaio computers, as well as Sony's Microsoft-DRM-backed music store. The decision to back HD DVD stems not from a dislike of Sony, but from the assessment of the maturity and consumer-friendliness of HD DVD. No, seriously."



This article is a great primer on the strengths of HD DVD. HD DVD is the only format to support managed copy, giving consumers the ability to copy the content to their PCs, portable media players, or stream the content across a home network. HD DVD also has a hybrid disc specification, meaning you can buy an HD DVD disc, watch is as a regular DVD now, then when you get an HD DVD player down the road, you can just flip the disc over and play the HD DVD side. HD DVD currently has the most capacity at 30 GB, whereas Blu-Ray has only shown 25 GB discs. Theoretically 50 GB Blu-Ray discs are possible, but none have been produced outside of a lab/test setting. I think HD DVD is going to see a lot more support in the coming weeks and months. It's the most mature of the two formats out there right now, and has a significant head start on Blu-Ray.