Now that DVDs have become fully accepted by the masses, and even progressive-scan players can be found for under $70, what's a videophile got to do to stay ahead of the pack?
Or perhaps the better question is: Now that DVDs are almost 7 years old, which is an eternity in the consumer electronics world, what comes next?
The answer is high-definition DVD. These high-capacity DVDs can take advantage of the improved resolution of a high-definition television.
It's expected the next-generation DVD will use a blue laser, which has a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in today's DVD players, meaning that more data can be packed into the same amount of space. Today's DVDs can hold about 4.7 GB of data, while a blue-laser HD-DVD could conceivably hold as much as 30 GB.
Unfortunately, the switch to high-definition DVD has hit a roadblock. The major consumer electronics companies are squabbling over what the standard should be for the new discs. Two camps, one led by Matsushita, Philips and Hitachi, and the other by Toshiba and NEC, are fighting over whose technology will be used and how much data the discs should hold.
This isn't the first time this has happened. Most people don't know that, until 1995, two standards existed for the first generation of DVDs. The industry eventually put aside its differences and settled on a single standard, and the rest is history.
You'd think the massive success of the DVD format would be enough to force a resolution of the current dispute over HD-DVDs, but so far it's not happening.
That said, Microsoft may offer a solution. The company is making an end run around the industry, which means we might have HD-DVD within months, rather than years.
Microsoft is determined to make Windows Media Video 9 the standard for HD-DVD, and it actually has a shot at accomplishing that. The company submitted WMV to the Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers as a standards candidate, and is hoping that it can succeed MPEG-2, the standard now used in DVDs, set-top boxes and video-editing systems.
You may recall that Artisan released an Extreme Edition of Terminator 2 in May that came with two discs: one that plays in a regular DVD player, and another extremely high-resolution version of the film encoded in Microsoft's Windows Media Video format that would only play on a PC with Windows Media Player 9, a fast-enough processor and a good video card.
Why go to all that trouble to release a movie in a format that only a few people can play? Microsoft wanted to show off the capabilities of its new format and demonstrate its capability for high-definition DVD.
But what's really compelling about WMV as a high-definition format is that it doesn't require a higher-capacity disc -- all that high-resolution data can be squeezed onto a disc that could potentially be read by existing DVD players.
All that's needed is for someone to build a regular DVD player that can decode the WMV format. And guess what? Samsung says it will have one out by January, years before anyone thought HD-DVD would be on the market.
Will there be many movies to watch besides Terminator 2? It remains to be seen. Either way, it's a promising start. And Microsoft's move should serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the consumer electronics industry.
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Reader question of the week: *How can I avoid making a bad gadget-purchasing decision that will leave me with an orphaned product? For example, Canon and Olympus both have exciting digital SLRs out now. Olympus seems to be releasing the more exciting digital-specific lenses. But what if no one buys the Olympus camera, and I'm stuck with an unpopular platform? -- John Fulwider *
One of the perils of being an early adopter is the risk that you'll shell out a lot of cash on the next Betamax. But just because you've bought something that turned out to be unpopular doesn't always mean it's useless.
Unlike a Betamax VCR, which became more or less obsolete once movie studios stopped releasing their films in the format, plenty of gadgets aren't necessarily rendered useless even if the company that makes them goes out of business or only a few people buy them.
If you're able to take the pictures you want with it, who's to say that the Olympus E-1 (we assume this is the camera you're referring to) is orphaned if another camera turns out to be more popular?
People still swear by Apple's Newton PDA because it does exactly what they need it to, so they don't feel the need to upgrade to a more modern machine.
There's no sure way to avoid getting stuck with a losing gadget, but you can do a few things. One is just to be patient. The longer you wait, the less you'll probably have to spend to satisfy your gadget lust.
The other is to do lots and lots of research. Plenty of gadget enthusiast sites are out there. Start reading them, and you'll gradually get a better sense of whether a specific technology, platform or gadget is going to make it.
Right now, for instance, most cell-phone forums are predicting Nokia's N-Gage game phone will be DOA. They're not infallible, but these people usually know their stuff, so they're as reliable an indicator of whether a gadget will take off as you can get.
Peter Rojas is the editor of Gizmodo, a gadgets and consumer electronics website. Got a gadget question? E-mail him at askgizmodo@gizmodo.com.
Studios Sue DVD Software Maker
