Why I’m not going to buy an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray optical drive

Leaders in both the music and film industry fear the repercusssions of mainstream piracy taking hold. However, I really do wonder about the validity of some of their decisions.

Case and point: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. In addition to an encryption scheme more advanced than that found on common DVDs, these discs have the additional artificial requirement of specialized encryption hardware. I say “artificial”, because the discs will work reguardless of whether that hardware is in place. The catch is, that without that hardware, the discs will refuse to play their movies at high-resolutions. They’ll instead be bumped down to DVD quality, or not play at all.

The problem arises from the fact that alot of people (youths especially), will watch those HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies on their computers. However, no computer on the market today has that encryption hardware. It’s not just the PCs themselves either: they’ll need to buy specialized (read: expensive) monitors. Current monitors will play high-end resolution material just fine as is, but they don’t have that specialized encryption module the industry wants them to have. Now whereas it may take three-four years for computers the eventually carry that equipment, it will take far longer for the monitors themselves to be replaced due to their exhorbitant cost.

So ultimately, that means that all legitimate customers wanting to play the movies on their computers will be blocked from doing so in high-resolution. So one has to wonder, what’s the point? Why not just go for DVDs, which are *alot* cheaper to boot instead? In its quest to minimize piracy, the industry has defeated the very reason why anyone would adopt to this new format. This is like the owner of a stable shooting all their horses so that no one will steal them.

But what of the pirates that plan on making copies? They don’t even deal with the encryption problems to begin with. They get their stuff from plants over in China and so forth. In the Internet Age, all it takes is for one copy in the world to surface. Once that’s done, all the bootleggers jump on it and distribute it. Whether these new medias have heavy encryption or not won’t change that, nor the amount of time it gets for illegitimate copies to surface.

I suppose that I’m getting riled up about this because I’m one of those legitimate customers that watch movies on their computer. What I see here is something that will impair me, in the name of something it won’t even hinder. I do understand the need to have checks in place to hamper expanding piracy, but is this really the way we want things to be?

The answer is that it doesn’t matter. Because ultimately, consumers won’t ever know the difference. Of those who do, fewer will even care. It’s only the techies like me that get upset at the artificial constraints being placed upon us. The fact is that in a few years, whether they’re worth it or not, HD-DVDs and/or Blu-Ray optical drives will be installed in computers. Then, a few years later, everyone will have the necessary hardware. It’s at that point things will work according to the imaginary plan. However, that wait of five years, for myself, is absurd. But if I’m the only one that will ever care… well, then it doesn’t matter what the industry pulls off.

PS. I keep saying “industry” because there’s not just one player in this. It isn’t just the MPAA, it isn’t just the hardware manufacturers, it isn’t just the likes of Sen. Orrin Hatch. It’s the combination of the whole.