Format wars are commonplace in the modern history of electronics. Even Thomas Edison had to deal with political and corporate wrangling for the format of his early wax audio cylinder records invented in 1877. The dispute over which audio recording format would become the standard continued until 1918 when Emile Berliner’s patent expired for his competing disc format. Companies immediately put the far superior laterally cut discs into production and the format war was settled. Most recently, Sony’s Blu-Ray disc beat out Toshiba’s HD-DVD after years of tussling for major movie studio support. Some have argued that this format war is the final conflict over physical media (including us), but will hoarders be content to let go of their impressive collections in favor of streaming content? More importantly, are content providers listening?
Adam Frucci, from the weekly Shift column of DVICE, wrote a eulogy set in 2010 for physical media a number of years ago and in many ways it still rings true:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of our friends the CD, the DVD, the HD DVD, the Blu-ray Disc, and every other physical media format. For many years they stood by us and provided us with handy ways for us to consume our favorite media, but their time has come and gone. In order for us to get some closure I’ve gathered us here to talk about our fondest memories and to recount those last harrowing years as our friends desperately clung to life. They were fighters, weren’t they? Right to the very end. But here we are, coming up to the end of 2010, and look at how things have changed. President Obama has cured both AIDS and cancer personally, there’s a colony on the moon, and all music, video, and photography is enjoyed exclusively in digital form.
A massive hard drive, a fat internet pipe and oodles of data seems fantastic, but researchers continue to push for more data on a disc despite all the optimistic discussion about the end of physical media. Earlier this year, New Scientist reported that scientists are working on a holographic disc that can store up to 20 times more data than Blu-Ray. Using a three-dimensional recording process, discs can store more layers of information within a single surface. The technology utilizes larger, branched molecules within the disc polymers. If this sounds complicated…that’s because it is. The image below puts the process in more layman’s terms, but the bottom line is that you can squeeze at least a terabyte on a single disc.
Physical media is not only about the delivery of entertainment, but of all types of data. In an interview with The Daily Princetonian from 2005, Bill Gates stated,
For us it’s not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything’s going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it’s even unclear how much this one counts.
Of course, Microsoft’s HD-DVD went the way of the dodo, so perhaps Bill was hoping to steer attention away from Blu-Ray’s victory. Format wars are increasingly about politics backing the technology rather than the effectiveness of the technology itself. Given the recent developments in disc storage capabilities, maybe we should be realistically preparing for another format war down the line instead of dreaming of pure streaming data delivery. Format wars aren’t going anywhere with continued conglomeration of our digital lives, but it seems discs are going to continue to be a part of our marketplace well after Blu-Ray.
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