This week I attended the CES show.  I have been thinking of what type of lab note I should enter here when luck landed right in my lap.  Luck has been good to me here in Vegas. By coincidence I had dinner tonight at the Japanese restaurant at the MGM and seated next to me at the sushi bar was an executive from Warner Brothers (a division of Time Warner).  We talked about CES.  Warner Brothers debuted at the show a dual format HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disk.  On one side is the Blue-Ray format and on the other side is HD-DVD!  Many of the other studios and retailers are VERY interested in the format .... EVERYONE ELSE (the electronics manufacturers) is upset at them!

Let me explain why.

Think about who wins.  First you need to know that Warner Brothers has a patent on this new disk format. The rest of the industry is about split on support of the two formats.  Both sides (Toshiba camp and Sony camp) have poured tons of money into winning.  In one fell swoop Warner Brothers has made both formats a commodity.  It does not matter which player the consumer purchases.  The consumer can, and will, purchase the cheaper player if the disk will play on either one!  Think about poor LG electronics who spent a ton of money to develop and launch at CES a dual format player which will retail for $1200.  There is no need for the consumer to purchase that now.

This dual format disk has gotten support from the major retailers (Circuit City, Best Buy, Amazon..) and some of the other major studios.  In addition Warner Brothers is claiming they can also include standard format DVD on the same disk sometime in the future.  It looks like they certainly have shifted the momentum toward their direction and the ensuing royalties.

Oh, one prediction before I end this.  Expect much negative PR about this new dual format disk from both the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray consortium's. They got a lot to lose.

[Update 1/17 - I have found out the actual recording mechanism is more sophisticated than one format on each side.  The formats are actually laid on top of each other in different depth layers. I was probably getting a novices description but it's irrelevant to the point of this lab note.]