Chris Pirillo Made Me Cry
I Heart Chris Pirillo (to the point of my completely freaking out when he commented in my site a while back)... I really do. I loved watching him on TV, and I listen to his web-radio show/podcast (admittedly, not as much as I'd like) but today Chris Pirillo made me cry.
Today was the day that Chris declared (or, predicted) HD-DVD to be the victor in the Next Battle Royal o' Media Formats(TM). One of the reasons that he cited was either a) Him being woefully uninformed or b) him mistyping. HD-DVD will not NOT NOT play in current generation DVD players. The players will play the current gen discs... but not the other way around (another factual error include the dual layer HD-DVD is not in development, it's the 3 layer disk that is being made simply as a response to the fact that BD will have so much more capacity). It'll be like the PS2... it plays PS1 games, but the PS1 won't play PS2 games. That was part of the crying, but the big part was that Chris seems to be becoming more and more of a Microsoft spokesperson and less of a well informed Geek-Dude.
Now, I'm not saying that Microsoft is evil... I don't really think that... I just don't think they make particularly good products, and most of the time (at this point in their existence) they're playing catch-up to the folks who are doing real innovation. They use their installed user base and financial power to muscle the industry into their world instead of making a product that will simply kick ass. The X360 is a good example. It's had some problems sure... But I'm not going to talk of over heating, freezing up or general wonkiness with internal resolution rendering... I'm going to talk about MS's lack of foresight in regards to the post DVD world that it's supposedly introducing with said Box. Seriously, talk about the High Definition Experience all you want -- but if you're not going to back it up with a disk format that's got the capacity for the games being developed for the system, you're just blowing smoke. Add that to the fact that it doesn't have a working high-def output from the box, or built in support of any high-def movie format and the whole thing seems like a marketing ploy.
Now lets talk Blu-Ray Disc (heretofore known as BD). It's not perfect. Far from it. But it does have the support of many of the really major players in the movie industry, it's got higher capacity, and by the time it actually launches, the cost of manufacturing will be far less that it was when the labcoats were developing prototypes. Economies of scale will come into effect once the disks are in full production. Perhaps the hardware will be a bit more expensive. Fine. Who cares? No, really. Who Cares? I don't. I want a PS3 same as everyone else. With a PS3, I'll get a BD player. Also -- anyone who cares about the cost of HD hardware is an idiot. If you have to think about whether or not you can afford all the gizmos it'll take for you to get a true HD experience, you can't afford it. No. Really. You can't. The display alone will set you back a couple of grand. And we're not even talking audio yet. Then there's cabling -- and yes. Cabling is extremely important. Oh, what was that? The room you're putting everything in is rectangular (and yes -- that includes squares) -- you're probably going to want to get some baffles for the walls so you don't set up too many standing waves or get weird phasing from the speakers. What was that? Oh, good. You get it. Don't feel bad though, I can't afford it either.
I have a few predictions of my own. One -- The Sony PlayStation 3 will be the deciding factor in the format war. Pure and simple. People want the PS3, and in getting it, they also get the player. Done and Done. Two -- it will take until at least the federally mandated Digital TV switch before high def discs take off in any meaningful way. Really. At this point I'd guess that 80% of people with an LCD TV think they're watching HDTV. Of those people, I'm going out on a limb here (really, very far out on a limb... I have absolutely no statistical data to back any of these guesses up with) and guess that maybe, maybe 45% of that 80% actually has an HD (semi)capable TV. Of that 45% -- I'd guess that most of them think that watching a progressive scan DVD is giving them a High Def experience. They think they have it, and that's good enough. No one will care. Some people say that this is like the difference between watching old B&W and color. That's crap. This will be similar to the difference in watching a 16mm film and 35mm. Will you notice? Sure. Will it change your life? Probably not. I've done the HD thing (at a friends). I was quite impressed... ... ... with the four channels of HD that he receives. Actually, it might be more than four... It might be like, 12. Four of them are the Discovery Channel and four of them are local network affiliates. So, you know. Four channels of HD. He loves it, and I don't blame him, but unless you live with nothing but HD for a while then try to go back, you won't notice and you probably wont care.
Ok. I'm done. For anyone who read through all that, your geek rating has just increased by +3 and your cloak of Nerd will be delivered in the morning.
-Jon
P.S. By the way, Chris, if you read this and want to comment, my comments are broken. But please please please feel free to send me your comments and I'll post them here, completely unedited.