High definition delivery - Is it time?

Originally published Jan 31, 2008

As videographers move towards the world of HD, delivery is still a problem. One issue is the format war. Even though the balance seems to be tipping in favor of BluRay, HD-DVD still needs to be considered. The other issue is media. BluRay writers are out there for around $500. HD-DVD burners are more difficult to find. Media costs are still quite high. In addition software can be an issue, particularly for Mac users. Apple's DVD Studio Pro at this time only supports HD-DVD, while Windows users have a number of BluRay authoring products out there.

Regarding media, there is a solution to producing HiDef DVDs without investing in a new writer. Both BluRay and HD-DVD can be written to a standard (red laser) DVD. Using H264 encoding it is possible to put 30 minutes or more of HD video on a single layer disk and more than an hour on a dual layer disk. I have made HD-DVDs using H264 that play fine on my Toshiba A3 HD-DVD player. For wedding videographers this means that we can put our short form and highlights videos on a single disk. That is what I plan to do when I go HD.

Of course a lot of experts say that neither BluRay or HD-DVD will ever catch on. There is certainly some good reasons to believe this. Most people are quite happy with the image that today's up-scaling DVD players deliver. If there isn't a significant jump in quality, the public won't buy. This happened a few years ago when two competing high resolution audio formats, SACD and DVD Audio,were introduced. The improvement wasn't noticeable to most people. In addition all DVD Audio disks (as well as some SACD disks) would not play in an ordinary DVD player. At the same time, online delivery of music was getting popular. As a result consumers stayed away, and both formats died out.

This could happen to HiDef DVD video. If the consumer isn't interested, and online delivery of video takes off, High Definition DVDs could fade away. I for one hopes that this doesn't happen. My clients would not like it if they only way that they get their wedding videos in HD is to download them. When we have gone HD we will still deliver our videos on standard definition DVD. In they will still look great, even on a big HD television. We will be watching how the BluRay HD-DVD war plays out. Most likely we will also deliver on one (or both) of those formats. There is also the option of creating a high definition file that can be played on a computer. If high definition DVDs fail in the marketplace, we may give clients the option of getting their video in HD on an external hard drive.