And the winner is...

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Oggi, 19 febbraio, Toshiba ha annunciato l’interruzione dello sviluppo, produzione e vendita di lettori e masterizzatori HD DVD. Il Blu-ray di Sony (fondatore della "Blu-ray Disc Association" insieme a Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp e Samsung) ha vinto la “guerra” dei DVD ad alta definizione, dopo che qualche anno fa aveva perso la sfida Betamax contro VHS… una bella rivincita!

Negli ultimi tempi c’erano stati parecchi segnali che indicavano che il Blu-ray stava prendendo il sopravvento, con la scelta esclusiva di questo formato da parte di numerose major (Sony a parte J) e di grandi catene di distribuzione dell’home video, come Blockbuster e Wal-Mart. Senza trascurare il grande successo della Playstation 3, che rappresenta un economico lettore per questo tipo di dischi. Le cifre, per quanto riguarda la vendita di dischi, parlano di un rapporto 70 a 30 in favore del Blu-ray, ma, relativamente alla vendita dell’hardware, si passa ad un ben più netto 93% del mercato in mano al Blu-ray (dati NPD Group). Non dimentichiamo, infatti, che anche produttori di PC come Dell hanno scelto questo formato.

Come in ogni guerra che si rispetti, non mancano le “vittime innocenti”: in questo caso, come in altri nel passato, chi ci rimette sono i consumatori, e nello specifico gli “early adopter” dell’HD DVD… come si sentiranno nell’apprendere che il formato che hanno scelto, e per il quale hanno investito in un lettore e una biblioteca di film, sarà presto estinto?

Guardando la cosa da un punto di vista più “egoistico”, per chi ancora non ha effettuato scelte la fine di questa guerra è un bene, perché sarà possibile procedere all’acquisto di un lettore ad alta definizione senza rischi. E tutto sommato il periodo di esistenza in vita di entrambi i formati è stato breve (un paio di anni), se non altro se confrontato con il decennio di scontro tra VHS e Betamax…

Dal canto nostro, in Italia il 2007 è stato l’anno della fine definitiva del VHS che dovrebbe sparire del tutto (come Home Video) all’inizio di quest’anno. Cresce il mercato del DVD (40 milioni di pezzi venduti e 500 milioni di euro di fatturato, edicole escluse [dati Univideo]) e, con ben altri numeri, anche quello dei formati ad alta definizione.

Today, February 19^th, Toshiba has announced its intention to interrupt the development, production and marketing of HD DVD readers and recorders. Sony’s Blu-ray (developed together with Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung) has therefore won the high-definition DVD war; a great revenge for Sony, that some years ago lost the Betamax vs. VHS war.

In the last few months some signs appeared indicating that Blu-ray was taking the lead: major motion pictures companies (including Sony J), department stores chains like Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster chose this format. Not to mention the success of Playstation 3, that is an rather economical Blu-ray reader. In the US, 7 next-gen DVDs out of 10 are Blu-ray Discs (BD), and 93% hardware is Blu-ray (NPD Group data). We should not forget, in fact, that also PC manufacturer (e.g. Dell) chose this format.

Just like in any real war, there are “innocent casualties” too: in this case, like other times in the past, the consumer is the one who is damaged, and in particular the HD DVD early adopters… how do they feel, knowing that the HD format that they chose will soon be extinct? Who’s going to refund them for the reader that they bought and their HD DVD library?

If we look at this situation from a selfish point of view, however, the end of this war is a good thing for all people that haven’t made a choice yet: now it’s possible to select the Blu-ray format with no hesitation or risks. And this war didn’t last too long, just a couple of years: if we just compare it to the ten-year struggle between VHS and Betamax…

Hype: Qtrax and more

I am sure you all have heard about Qtrax in the last days; it’s the P2P service that, according to the last week announcement at MIDEM in Cannes, should enable people to download music for free. If you want to enjoy a 25 million songs catalogue, all that you have to do is to put up with some advertising on the Qtrax website.

Qtrax boss announced that they already had agreements with the major record companies, including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music.

If you believe that it’ too beautiful to be true, you are definitely right.

After a few days, in fact, it come out that Qtrax had no agreement with any record label. So what was all this hype for? Maybe just free promotion, just a way to draw the media attention on Qtrax.

Two considerations came to my mind. First of all, that maybe Qtrax business model has some flaws; it’s unlikely that record companies will publish electronic copies of their hits without any kind of control. Qtrax claims to protect the songs using DRM, but all the previous attempts from the record companies to protect music with DRM have completely failed. Moreover, DRM-protected songs do not work on the iPod, which uses a different protection system. Qtrax CEO pretends they will have a way to make their songs compatible with iPod, but do not explain how. It would be a commercial suicide for any music store to be incompatible with the most successful mp3 player in the world.

The second consideration is about the carelessness and inaccuracy of many newspapers and televisions (like Repubblica in Italy or Times) that published Qtrax announcements without verifying if they were true. I don’t think this is the right way to be a “good journalist”, it would have been easy to contact the record companied and ask them about the existence of the presumed agreements with Qtrax.

Another example of “hype with little content” is represented by a movie that was just released last weekend in Italy: Cloverfield. In the US this movie, in the first weekend, was the greatest success of all times. This outcome was achieved as a result of a rigorous and elaborated marketing strategy by the producer J.J. Abrams, which also leveraged on the post 9/11 “paranoia”.

After the first weekend, the success was greatly reduced, because, also according to the reviews that I read, Cloverfield is a mediocre movie… however, J.J. Abrams can be happy, because the movie has already paid its costs.