(Column) – Microsoft, as is long suspected, decided to back HD DVD and (with Intel) pitched itself firmly in the anti-Sony camp for Blu-Ray, which is pretty much common news, but disregarding the common opinion that it did so due to their differences in the gaming console arena, we find that it really did have very pertinent reasons to go the HD DVD way and of course, Xbox 360 vs. Sony PS3 could be one of the reasons.

We would all love to have a standard that is user friendly in the sense that it allows us to make copies, play them on different players and/or computer setups. This requires a fair bit of revenue loss at the manufacturer’s end and lets face it, bottom line and meeting quarterly street expectations count, so no manufacturer would want to let you make copies easily, if not outright ban it. We, as consumers (con-sumers – wonder who came up with the term), don’t like this and any standard that attempts to limit us in this way is ripped to shreds by our brilliantly gifted and talented crackers (or whatever you choose to call them). Case in point is that CSS (Content Scrambling System) was famously cracked because it disallowed DVD copying.

Making Duplication Legal: HD DVD changes all this by implementing the ‘Managed Copy’ technology. This technology uses parts of the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) encryption system to ensure that users are allowed some amounts of copying such as playing media over a home network, backing up movies on a hard drive, transferring to a portable player (new iPod maybe?) etc., but the real deal comes when you see that HD DVD makes it mandatory for content providers to provide some form of managed copy when you buy the disc, so users can make at least one copy free of charge. Despite Sony being one of the founding members of the AACS technology, it’s still not clear whether or not Blu-Ray will support it.

Also, DVDs are region locked, a feature that doesn’t sit too well with me for if I buy a DVD in Japan, why shouldn’t it play in a DVD player in the U.S.? HD DVD will do away with all this "regioning" and confusing code, so that no matter where you buy your disc from, it will play wherever you want and in more than one location.

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HD DVD Is Hybrid: The biggest draw back with Blu-Ray is that it’s not backwards compatible with the current generation of DVD players. What that means to you and me is that if everyone goes ahead and adopts Blu-Ray as the defacto standard, we’ll all have to purchase new equipment to play the Sony supported standard, which would translate into tremendous sales figures for manufacturers (namely Sony as Blu-Ray is Sony’s copyrighted technology). HD DVD, on the other hand, does support current generation DVD players in a pretty innovative move by Toshiba. Normally, a DVD is created by combining two discs together, which make it about 1.2mm thick. Toshiba is planning on putting SD content on one side of the disc, so when viewers upgrade their players and TVs to HD, they can simply flip the disc and play their movie on the other side. Can they be any more consumer friendly? Well yes, if they see more profits out of that.

Anyway, moving on, HD DVD has a 30GB disc ready right now and Toshiba claims to have perfected the manufacturing process. This means that whenever they are launched, the support would be right there ready to go.

In comparison, Blu-Ray still has 25GB in proven capacity with the 50GB disc under research and development.

To sum it up, HD DVD has a higher proven capacity, supports Managed Copy technology, features hybrid discs at the moment and the whole process just seems to be a lot more structured than Blu-Ray where we just have a 25GB disc that details on hybrid support as well as copy protection and higher capacities are scanty at best. Clearly, Microsoft has really thought this through and gone behind HD DVD, plus, it has not outright rejected support for Blu-Ray. It has cleverly stated that Vista will have native support for HD DVD while Blu-Ray support will be available as a separate download, so it has covered its bases and looks to be holding out even now for a unified standard, but that could prove to be more elusive than winning over the Linux community.