[Infowarrior] - OpEd: HD disk format wars are over

[Richard Forno]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36574

HD disk format wars are over

A clear victor emerges

By Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday 26 December 2006, 01:22

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to
the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media
companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a
solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).

Yes, in a year where Sony rootkitted it's customers, lied to my face about
their actions (hi John, still have your number, kisses), and fell flat with
anything related to Blu-Ray, things couldn't get worse right? Well, the
other camp, HD-DVD is only slightly less nasty, but still unacceptable.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, they both failed in the market.

MS and the media companies sold you out hoping to reap more and more
profits. Let me just say I held out no hope that they would behave in
anything less than a socially irresponsible fashion, but the depths of their
depravity did end up shocking me.

Then came the PC makers, the dumb sheep that they are. There seems to be a
race to see who can pass the buck quickest in this camp. From my dealing
with them last CES where they said 'we have to screw our customers, we were
asked nicely to', to the blaming of people up and down the food chain from
them, it is a comic scenario. Pathetic.

Then comes the chipmakers, AMD and Intel, and the respective platforms, Live
and VIIV. What laughable efforts those are. A year and a half ago, I said
that Intel sold you out, and they did. The DRM infested nightmares of
consumer rights removal that are the media platforms have one thing in
common, the content mafia is quite adamant that they are still too insecure.
The strategy from Intel was to start at a middle ground and push to the
consumer side of things as time went on.

Instead, they started out as MS's bitch and were beaten into submission like
a redheaded stepchild. Now they have the glorious job of jumping at the
every whim of the media companies, way to hold your head high Intel! I would
say the same for AMD, but to this day, I am not sure what Live does, if it
really exists.

Both companies will tout absolutely huge sales figures, and MS will point to
incredible Media Center sales, up thousands of percent this year alone. Let
me clue you in on something, MCE used to mean that you needed a tuner, you
had to meet certain requirements for power, speed and functionality. These
boxes flopped so badly it was laughable, selling more restrictions for more
money is not a bright marketing strategy.

Now, MCE is sold instead of XP home. The requirements? None really, so
basically all sales that were home are now MCE. I defy you to find any
retail customer who actually uses it in that fashion, maybe 1% do.

With the proliferation of MCE, both Live and VIIV stickers moved out into
mainstream boxes. Damn those things sell like hotcakes, umm, what do they
get me besides DRM infections again? No, really, I mean it, WTF do they do?
Anyone? So, both Intel and AMD are jumping up and down over the 'successes'
of their respective DRM for manufacturer kickback programs. Be still my
beating heart.

Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections
masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to
anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than
these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because
of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and
say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers,
what a laugh riot.

In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-Ray,
HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the
better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are
staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built
higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone
who pulls out a credit card. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it
whistling down, operators are standing by.

In the mean time, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes. If you take 10
minutes to look around, you will see that every HD movie is now available on
P2P networks. I haven't bothered to get one, so I can't comment on the
quality, but it sure looks like availability is there. What was an
underground clique in the 1980s and 1990s has become mainstream and so
vastly much easier to do that it is laughable. Before the technology hits 1%
market penetration it is comprehensively cracked and better for the consumer
than the legit versions.

The lawsuits, threats, purchased governance and stern speeches could not
prevent the children of Warner Music from pirating, the less moneyed masses
are a lost cause. (Funny how he wasn't sued though, kind of makes you
wonder...) As of right now, anyone can get any music or movie they want, for
free, much more easily than they can through legal DRM infected channels.
Piracy, the better choice (tm).

If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM
nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work
with your Blu-Ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set
wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for
nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their
pirated CDs in though.

On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save
the $1000 on the Blu-Ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly
out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is
quite on-demand. You don't need to sign up, give them your details to be
sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the
content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for
(not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).

On the down side, the RIAA/MPAA/PATSY/TOOLBOY have sued probably 10,000
people now, and each 'settlement' is, well lets just use $5000 for the sake
of round numbers. Now, the conservative estimates of P2P usage was around 30
million people, but I am pretty damn sure that is far lower than the actual
usage. Last time I saw anything serious, it was 35M and growing fast. Lets
just assume that it is now 50M users.

10,000 * $5,000 = $50,000,000. The net cost to each P2P user, assuming
everyone out there settles is $1. To look at it another way, if you look at
it in the worst case light, you have a 1 in 5000 chance of getting nailed. A
lot of people buy lottery tickets with far far worse odds than that, and
spend more than $5000 doing so every few years. To be even more cynical,
hands up everyone who personally knows someone who got sued by the RIAA.
Now, hands up everyone who knows someone who downloaded music or movies. Any
guesses which one is bigger? Piracy, the better choice (tm).

What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled,
legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed
yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made
Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format
and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory
from the jaws of evil. Piracy, the better choice(tm). µ