Picture this: it is 2010, the movie “Avatar” has been released, you are excited to watch it, so you go to the nearest movie rental store to get your hands on it. You get home, prepare your popcorn, pop the disk into your PlayStation 3, and watch it with your friends in 1080p. This event would not have been possible at the time without the presence of Blu-ray; it was one of the most influential technologies in the entertainment industry and it is still being used in gaming as the main format for distributing video games. It is especially sentimental to me because I have played many video games over the years and, for me, Blu-ray directly correlates with many of my favorite gaming experiences like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
DVD was the predecessor to Blu-ray; it uses red laser to read disks that store 15 GBs of data and can hold resolutions up to 720x480p (Rouse, 2017). HD DVD was a revision of DVD that improved upon it by making it store up to 30 GBs and display high-definition visuals (Lawler, 2019). The rise of Blu-ray was quite remarkable because it was launched as an answer to HD DVD, the leading technology in the mid-2000s; it managed to be even more advanced by storing up to 50 GBs and a resolution of 1920x1080p (Rouse, 2017). The higher capacity and higher resolution were Blu-ray’s value propositions because higher capacity meant storing more data giving game developers and movie publishers more creative freedom.
Gaming played an important role in shaping the storage technology landscape for years to come. Two of the biggest companies in the industry picked opposite sides in what Lawler dubbed “The format war” (2019). Sony, supported Blu-ray, the technology it participated in innovating while Microsoft, through supported HD DVD (Lawler, 2019). The consoles were fierce competitors and the competition in formats only added fuel to the fire. I witnessed the competition between Xbox 360 and PS3 firsthand and the competition in that generation of consoles was the most intense it has ever been; picking a console to play your video games on was like picking your favorite sports teams.
Consumers want what they want, when they want it, and at the cheapest possible price.
Blu-ray has been losing popularity, not to a fault of its own, rather, streaming services like Netflix, HBO max, and Disney plus have taken over the movies distribution market through their on-demand options while Xbox Game Pass is a popular option for gamers that want a cheap, accessible, and diverse video game catalog. Streaming is more consumer friendly; consumers want what they want, when they want it, and at the cheapest possible price.
If games and movies are limited to certain companies, then what happens if they go out of business?
One thing that tends to be overlooked is the danger of streaming services that threatens media preservation for generations to come. Whenever you subscribe to a streaming service, you buy the right to the content provided by the service instead of owning the content itself. This is where Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes in because it is a way of authenticating the license that you purchased by subscribing to the service (Roach, 2020).
DRM was introduced to crack down on pirating by rights holders but it is more dangerous than people think. “The main fear with DRM platforms is that they’ll simply shut down” (Roach, 2020). If games and movies are limited to certain companies, then what happens if they go out of business? Services can go and take with them a lot of people’s beloved movies and games because after their closure, there will not be a way to authenticate people’s licenses that they bought. There is not a problem with people having access to streaming services. However, they should not be the only way to access media. Companies should maintain support for physical media, through Blu-ray, to ensure that the next generation has access to timeless works of art.
References
Lawler, R. (2019). Format wars: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-07-format-wars-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd.html?_fsig=jMKiu58deoZV3GANrAgnFg–%7EA
Roach, J. (2020). What is DRM in video games and how does it work? Digitaltrends. https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-is-drm-in-video-games/
Rouse, M. (2017). Blu-Ray disk. Technopedia. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/2600/blu-ray-disk-bd