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<strong>Veritas</strong> <strong>et</strong> <strong>Visus</strong> <strong>Display</strong> <strong>Standard</strong> February 2009<br />
Walled Garden – While Steve Jobs offers “HD” content you can rent/buy as a download from iTunes he<br />
forgot to tell you that you’re buying/enjoying a Lite version of HD. Want to download 1080p HD content –<br />
like you g<strong>et</strong> on a BD disc? Start the download, go to bed and check back tomorrow… or so.<br />
He’s right…kinda! But don’t believe he’s delivering the solution (check http://tinyurl.com/5jhvl4 again)! Discs<br />
succeed when there are a lot of entertainment options available. It succeeds when there are players in tens, hundreds<br />
of thousands of homes. Don’t l<strong>et</strong> anyone kid you… that takes time. That takes lower prices. For indies and<br />
everyone but the huge studies that’s tricky right now.<br />
The BDA uses the same sort of formula that produced billions of dollars in profits for CDs… they license the logo<br />
(in BD’s case it is $3,000 per provider + X cents per disc + $1,300 per AACS license). That’s BS! Pass out the BD<br />
logo like popcorn to anyone who produces a movie to the format spec – Hollywood, Bollywood, indie, who<br />
knows/who cares. The more discs on the shelves... the more hardware, software, titles sold. OK so you levy some<br />
“reasonable” per disc charge based on sales – maybe. AACS license? Who gives a rat’s behind?<br />
Time for copies: We have 2000 music CDs at home. Love to have them on our MP3 player but ripping them and<br />
copying them to the player? Too much of a hassle… we’ll just throw them on our “ancient” 400-disc CD player.<br />
We just compl<strong>et</strong>ed a huge family project of copying our purchased and family VHS movies to DVD using<br />
Pinnacle’s Dazzle DVD Recorder. Never bothered copying movies before but doing it now? It’s insurance. Tapes<br />
are almost gone. Deck is on its last leg. There’s a world of CSS (Content Scrambling System) decryption software<br />
on the Web but we never bothered ripping any of our DVDs. AACS doesn’t stop anyone who’s into stealing…<br />
Doom9ers rip apart the player protection all the time… lazier folks go to Slysoft’s web site… thieves go to the<br />
source. Silly boys! Don’t worry about the freakin’ thieves… worry about the customers! Don’t worry about the<br />
early royalties… worry about the volumes!<br />
Prices arriving: This holiday season BD players tiptoed below the $200 price. BD burners limbo'd below the $450<br />
barrier. Now if they knock off most of the overhead for content developers the cost of movies – purchased or rented<br />
– might g<strong>et</strong> down to the same level of DVDs. That’ll make a huge difference. Of course BD isn’t just about movies<br />
– don’t tell Hollywood that – it’s also about archival storage. That’s an area that is of interest to individuals and<br />
companies concerned about data integrity and green IT. You could leave everything on your 1TB hard drive but<br />
som<strong>et</strong>ime, someday it’s going to fail on you. No sweat unless it’s got all your tax and e-mail records and the<br />
government wants to examine them the next day. Then you are so screwed!!!<br />
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