IT UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN GLOBAL BUSINESS INFORMATICS
SOCIETY & TECHNOLOGY
Why Blu-ray won the High Definition Optical Disc Format War
December 17, 2012
Author: Morten Henrichsen
Course Teachers: Casper Bruun Jensen and Laura Watts
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Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 3
2 RESEARCH QUESTION 5
3 RELEVANCE 5
4 METHOD 6
4.1 Empirical Sources 6
4.2 Analytical approach 6
5 ANALYSIS 8
5.1 Sony Designing a Preliminary Local Network 8
5.2 Destabilization of the DVD Forum 9
5.3 Toshiba Designing a Preliminary Local Network 9
5.4 Creating a Local Network 10
5.5 Relations Between the Local and Global Networks 11
5.6 Negotiating a Unified Standard 11
5.7 Imposing a Reverse Salient 12
5.8 Mutual Shaping of Actors 12
5.9 Market Introduction and Endgame 13
6 CONCLUSION 15
7 REFERENCES 16
APPENDIX A: ACTOR-NETWORK MAP A
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1 Introduction The home video market has grown immensely since JVC’s VHS format vanquished Sony’s
Betamax format in the videotape format war1 in the 1980’s. The VHS format has since been
supplanted by laser technology from the mid-nineties with the advent of the DVD. This time,
consumers did not witness a format war but there had in fact been one out of public sight between
two mutually incompatible formats: one backed by a group led by Sony, and the other by a group
led by Toshiba. A unified standard had been negotiated in the Technical Working Group created by
five computer companies – Apple, Compaq, HP, IBM, and Microsoft – wary of being caught in a
repeat of the costly videotape format war. The result was cross-industrial support of the DVD and
all movie studios providing their releases in the new format. The Technical Working Group was the
foundation of the DVD Forum who “employed strategies that would establish hierarchies of
control and mechanisms to maintain that control indefinitely.” (Sebok M. R., 2007, p. 139). DVDs
changed the consumer market from a rent-through to a sell-through market with the majority of
profits returned to the studios, and consumers even purchased the same movie titles they had seen
on VHS. The DVD’s physical resemblance to the well-known CD added to the customers appeal
and trust. Movie studios were exited because they could re-sell their repertoires of stock movies,
and with the added benefit of Digital Rights Management. However, the agreement was arrived at
only reluctantly, Sony had ceded significant patent rights to the collective and quickly became
unsettled by its decision when it realized that they missed out on millions of dollars of license and
patent revenues (Sebok M. R., 2007).
Later negotiations on proposed formats in the DVD Forum were less fruitful, as in case of the read-
only DVD. In the event of the DVD Forum’s approval of DVD-R as write-once format in favor of
the Sony-advocated DVD+R, the outcome was not just a new format war fought within the DVD
Forum, but it also intensified the existing tensions between Sony and Toshiba (Sebok M. R., 2007,
p. 166). Furthermore did changes in the organizational structure after threats of antitrust litigations
from the United States Department of Justice, force the consortium to change from a closed to an
open organization with voluntary and non-exclusive membership thus it lost its total control of any
DVD related format. These events led to relative instability of the DVD Forum around the time of
development of HD DVD and Blu-ray (Spark, 2009).
1 A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market.
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With the blue laser diode finally stabilized by scientists and viable for mass production, companies
began to experiment with the use of blue lasers in optical disc players. The blue laser diode
provided for much denser storage of information.
In 2000, Sony and Pioneer unveiled a new disc technology at the CEATEC electronics show called
DVR Blue, which would go on to form the basis for the Blu-ray Disc. The format was build over a
blue laser purchased from Nichia Chemical Industries, the company employing Shuji Nakamura,
the scientist who invented the blue laser. Two years later, led by Sony, nine of the world’s largest
electronics companies announced that they had jointly established the basic specifications for the
“next generation large capacity optical disc video recording format”, which included high quality
copyright protection functions (Sony: Press Releases, 2002). The companies were at the same time
represented in the DVD Forum, where three of them, including Sony, had the position of Principal
Members in the Steering Committee.
“Sony recognized its ability to innovate new technologies with content from games to movies meant
that the DVD Forum could not maintain its exclusivity over the optical disc marketplace." (Sebok
B. , 2009)
Later that year, Toshiba, who had the chair position of the DVD Forum, proposed jointly with NEC
two different, next-generation, high capacity, blue-laser DVD formats. The first was technically
similar to Blu-ray; while Toshiba and NEC one that enabled manufacturers to use the same
manufacturing infrastructure as DVD, it supported development of backward compatible players,
and it was easy to realize without a cartridge. Toshiba tried to use its chairman position to push
through a vote by the Steering Committee to endorse their format, but Sony and two other members
opposed it, but an agreement was made to carry on with the development of the format (Sebok B. ,
2009).
The decision by the DVD Forum, to engage in the development, of what would become known as
HD DVD, was inevitably the start of yet another format war like that between VHS and Betamax.
This format war would be decided by the strength of the network that each of the contestant
consortiums would be able to build and the strength of the actors they could muster, along with their
ability to keep the supportive network stable to the end.
In 2008, Toshiba recognized that they had failed to attain sustain support and decided to withdrew
its support and further promotion of HD DVD (Toshiba Corporation, 2008), the Blu-ray Disc came
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out victorious, and consumers who invested in the players and discs for the vanquished HD DVD
now found them self in the same position as those who had invested in Betamax. This raises
interesting questions, such as how Sony’s presence in both consortia helped them succeed to make
Blu-ray Disc serve as the new industry standard, and how DRM played a vital role in the decisive
battle of studio support.
2 Research Question In this paper I will investigate why Sony’s Blu-ray Disc won the format war? Additionally I will try
to answer the question, why Sony and Toshiba did not negotiate a unified format as they had done
with the DVD?
3 Relevance The technological controversy in this case is relevant to the course of Society & Technology
because it involves a network of many social and technological actors who interacted with each
other during the elaboration of the formats. It is also relevant because the outcome of the format war
was not predictable just by assessing which of the competing format was technological superior to
the other, and neither was it determined by the social context alone. Blu-ray’s victory in relation to
the format war should be seen in the nexus between the social context and technological content.
“The process of optical disc development, diffusion, control, commercialization, and popularization
are exceptional in the degree of involvement across industry lines and cannot be easily assessed by
studying one particular component, company or individual.” (Sebok B. , 2009)
Furthermore it is relevant because a format standard is negotiated in a network of actors to achieve
industry support and thereby gain momentum in society. In case of the write-once DVD it became
visible that the network where innovation occurs is not permanently stable, and new constellations
of actors may later threaten the stability of such a network, as it happened in case of the high
definition optical disc format.
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4 Method
4.1 Empirical Sources My investigation of why Blu-ray succeeded to become a de facto industry standard for high
definition optical discs, will rely on various written sources, including press releases from the actors
involved, interviews, articles in the tech press, and academic work, such as the academic article,
Convergent Consortia: format battles in high definition, of Bryan Sebok. Little academic work has
been conducted to uncover and explain this format war, but Sebok’s article provided a coherent
story of the events prior to and during the format war. His article investigates how Sony’s
convergent organization structure of subsidiaries in software and hardware gave them a competitive
advantage to Toshiba’s multi directional business strategy in the high tech industry. Sebok’s work
offers valuable insight in the format war and the creation of supportive networks build by of each
formats key protagonists.
The work of Kevin L. Spark also provided background information on the development of the two
formats, especially from a legal perspective.
Another article by Bryan Sebok, his dissertation that earned him his Ph.D degree, Convergent
Hollywood, DVD and the transformation of the home entertainment industries, has been used to
gather background information on the creation of the DVD, the appertaining DVD Forum, and the
high level of control that the consortium could leverage in the creation of the DVD.
4.2 Analytical approach A substantial part of modern day research and development on high-tech technology is carried out
in large corporations and further developed in even larger organizations; as opposed to the way in
which independent inventor-entrepreneurs like Edison and Tesla conducted their work. But there
are similarities because modern development of technology tends to center around a single
company, an actor in a larger network, which also consists of actors, all spanning multiple different
social worlds. New technology invented in large corporations and organizations tend to be
conservative as opposed to radical, which means that they are non-disruptive to the existing
infrastructure and technologies used by the company who invents them. The invention of BD and
HD DVD are not developed to replace an existing system, they are part of an evolution of the
existing technological system in which they are a conceived (Hughes, 1989).
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“Technologies tend not to arise in isolation from each other but are instead imbedded in broader
technological systems” (Bucchi, 2004). The technology of BD and HD DVD presupposes the
technology of audio and video compression algorithms, file formats, DRM, lasers diodes, content
interaction software, movies, and not least the high definition television sets. This broader
technological system also consists of social actors, the companies interested in those technologies
and developing them: movie studios who are creating content distributed using the technology, user
electronics manufacturers who makes the high definition television sets, disc players, game
consoles and computer drives, and IT companies developing the content interaction systems, DRM
systems, video-codecs, and PC player software.
In acknowledgement of this combination of human and non-human actors2 entangled in the
elaboration of a technological system, and due to the fact that technology and the social structures
in which they are developed are: mutually shaped, reshaped and sometimes even transformed into
new actors of their own right3, and to avoid technological or social determinism, Science and
Technology studies refer to those technical and social actors in the sense of socio-technical actors to
balance the weight between the technical and the social and give equal attention to both human and
non-human actors.
The notion of a network illustrates how those numerous actors are all actively involved in the
elaboration of an artifact, and we can use this concept of a network to analyze cases of
technological innovation as a result of the work in a complex network consisting of heterogeneous
actors with different interests. It gives us an analytical tool to analyze the success and failure of the
efforts to develop such an artifact without taking sides. The interesting aspect of the technological
innovation is not the artifact in itself; but the negotiations, which take place in the network in the
creation of it. In the case of the format war between HD DVD and BD there were not two distinct
networks. Some of the actors were present in both networks and played an active role in the success
and failure of the elaborative efforts of creating an artifact. The large size of the network and the
myriad of involved actors, entangled in processes and sub processes, makes it impossible to list all
but the most influential ones, those who contributed to the success of the BD; thus implicitly in the
failure of the HD DVD format (See Appendix A4).
2 I refer to human and non-human actors as conceptually defined by Bruno Latour and as used in (Law & Callon, 1992). 3 The concepts of mutual shaping of actors is described in (Law & Callon, 1992) 4 Appendix A contains an Actor-Network map, however simplified; it includes more actors than described in this paper.
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The network concept includes two levels of networks. One is referred to as the local network, which
consists of the actors closely related to the development of the project. The other is called the global
network, which consists of the actors that have an interest in the project without direct involvement.
Actors in the local and the global network ideally have to communicate through an obligatory
passage point. An obligatory passage point allow for local actors to set up a negotiation space that
give them a degree of autonomy from the global network of actors. Transactions between the two
networks are referred to as intermediaries, while the outcome is referred to as an artifact (Law &
Callon, 1992).
The concept of reverse salient describes a subsystem of a system, which limit further development.
It allows us to focus on the parts of the system or network that needs correction to further develop
the system. Both human and non-human actors can be a reverse salient. (Hughes, 1989)
5 Analysis
5.1 Sony Designing a Preliminary Local Network Engineers at Sony and Pioneer invented an early prototype of the Blu-ray Disc in a preliminary
network, where local actors inside the companies had been mobilized and contributing to the
creation of the intermediaries needed to satisfy the global network, constituted of the corporations
in which they were part of. The engineers were provided a temporary negotiation space and a set of
resources, such as technical equipment, economic support, and human resources. The returned
artifact was a prototype disc format for high definition content and a container with a set of basic
units such as an optical pickup and spindle motor, and analog circuits only. Digital circuits and
circuits for image and sound were placed in a separate container. The prototype disclosed to the
public was intended for recording high definition content broadcasted by cable television providers.
(CdrInfo, 2000) The delivered artifact satisfied the global network that now sought to position the
project in a larger global network in order to obtain the time and resources needed to further
develop the disc technology and standardize it. In 2002, Sony announced in a press release, that the
network was to expand with the participation of eight other consumer electronics manufacturers5.
The group of companies was initially called the Blu-ray Disc Founders. It was an arrangement to
define the relationship between Sony and Pioneer and their neighbors. The participating companies
5 The constituent actors in the local network included: Sony Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd., Sharp Corporation, and Thomson Multimedia (Sony, 2002)
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were interested in a new format, because it would give them access to patents, and the ability to an
early launch of players. Sony on the other hand was interested in their enrollment because it would
strengthen its local network and the arrangement secured their neutrality for a period of time since
the actors would be less interested in supporting a competing format now they were involved in the
project. It was a reciprocal simplification between Sony and its neighbors. (Law & Callon, 1992)
5.2 Destabilization of the DVD Forum The DVD forum, a constitution of networks of actors counting consumer electronics manufacturers,
software companies and disc manufacturers as well as an array of technical actors in the presence of
patents and technologies, had been destabilized by the organizational changes caused by
intervention from an actor from outside its local network, the United States Department of Justice.
Its ability to negotiate standards was impeded, and it was now prevented from expelling
contributing members (Spark, 2009). The heterogeneous actors it was constituted of were now free
to form rivaling organizations challenging its position as an obligatory passage point, through
which actors had to propose disc formats in order to have them adopted by the industry. The
companies in the group behind Blu-ray were all members of the DVD Forum. Toshiba was
powerless to stop the competing development outside the consortium (Sebok B. , 2009).
5.3 Toshiba Designing a Preliminary Local Network The DVD Forum was deeply split over whether to go with the more expensive blue laser or not. In
early 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. that involved
compressing HD content onto existing dual-layer red laser DVDs to avoid a costly shift to blue
lasers (Yoshida, 2002). But the decision was changed just two months later as they changed course
and announced that they would pursue their own blue laser solution, a format jointly proposed by
Toshiba and NEC as a “next-generation high-capacity, blue-laser DVD format that will allow
manufacturers to continue to use existing DVD plant and equipment and to minimize the investment
required for the transition to next-generation DVD players and drives.”. The proposal had two
different designs, “[o]ne is considering an approach based on a 0.6mm disc substrate, the same as
employed in current DVD, and the other a 0.1mm cover layer.” Toshiba and NEC independently
recommended the former (Toshiba Corporation & NEC Corporation, 2002). Toshiba still had faith
in the DVD Forum’s ability to negotiate a standard, but with Sony and the Blu-ray supporting
companies in the forum, they had no means to neutralize the hostile actors and create a divide
between the local network and outside actors, which limited their negotiation space (Sebok B. ,
2009).
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5.4 Creating a Local Network In 2002, Sony’s and three of their alliance partners’ position in the DVD Forum’s Steering
Committee gave them an opportunity to stalemate the specifications of HD DVD in the critical
phase of stabilizing its design and Toshiba was unable to prevent it. The management structure of
DVD Forum was a reverse salient, which it took Toshiba two years to change by using its chair
position to force changes to voting rules in the Steering Committee, and at the same time, Toshiba
appointed three actors supporting HD DVD to members of the Steering Committee. They had
finally managed to neutralize Sony’s ability to hamper decisions on the design of the HD DVD, but
they had lost the lead, which use of existing manufacturing infrastructure had given them (Sebok M.
R., 2007).
Sony’s past experience with unsuccessful attempts to have their proposed standards approved by the
DVD Forum was Sony’s motive to create a local network of their own. With support from major
consumer electronics manufacturers, the new consortium held the potential to act as a new
obligatory passage point, not just for the BD format, but for future optical disc formats as well. Its
member’s opposition to the DVD Forum, and simultaneous presence in both networks gained them
an advantageous position compared to Toshiba. The design of the Blue-ray Disc Association (BDA)
resembled that of the DVD Forum but with the difference that it had a strict hierarchical oriented
management structure with the Board of Directors’ ability to veto any decisions made in the
working groups and even the possibility to expel members. The Board of Directors was initially
constituted of the founding members (Spark, 2009). This design of a local network enabled Sony to
create a distinction between the inside and the outside and neutralize hostile actors from interfering
in the negotiation processes. They gained centralized control over the project, such that a single
locus shaped and mobilized the local network and obtained control over all transactions between the
local and the global networks. While developing their own format, Sony was still able to procure
knowledge from the DVD Forum, because of their position in its Steering Committee, and influence
decision processes regarding HD DVD (Sebok B. , 2009).
In 2004, the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee voted in favor of the HD DVD as the future high
definition disc format (DVD Steering Committee, 2004). Toshiba had finally achieved to establish a
negotiation space in the global network in which they could work on the HD DVD format, but
Toshiba could not prevent Sony from participating in the DVD Forum’s Working Groups as they
were entitled to as a member of the Steering Committee (Sebok B. , 2009).
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5.5 Relations Between the Local and Global Networks To keep the local network stable, both Toshiba and Sony had to gain support from the major movie
studios. Without content, a read-only high definition media would obviously fail in the market.
Sony argued that their format would offer superior Digital Rights Management features. Sony
gained early exclusive support from Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM (who’s
stock of movies Sony acquired by merger), and Universal Music Group. HD DVD had the
exclusive support from Universal Pictures. Besides the studios with exclusive support, there were a
number of studios refusing to take side and they would release titles on both formats. Among them
were Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, and DreamWorks. Both formats had
the support of a global network and would be able to deliver content from three of six of
Hollywood’s major studios (Spark, 2009). The outside actors had been simplified from the
standpoint of the projects, and as long as the local networks delivered improved DRM, they would
remain supportive.
5.6 Negotiating a Unified Standard In 2005, the two consortia tried to negotiate a unified standard. Blu-ray used a shorter focal length
than HD DVD, which gave them the opportunity to have a shorter pit-length and less space between
the pits.6 This design had the effect that the disc’s data layer had to be 0.1mm from the disc surface
to avoid diffusion of the laser beam, while Toshiba and NEC had initially proposed the same design
to the DVD Forum; they had recommended going for 0.6mm instead. In short the presence of an
unnoticeable non-human actor, in the form of a focal length complicated the negotiations. Toshiba
wanted to merge the two formats by using their disc structure and Sony’s file-system, but Sony
would not repeat the same mistake from the nineties and cede its patent rights to the collective in
order to negotiate a universal standard. Sony now knew it had the ability to develop formats and
build a strong network of cross-industrial support, and their membership of the DVD Forum
guaranteed that they would have license and patent revenues forthcoming no matter who’s format
won.
“[T]he key reasons behind. Sony’s resolve was its ability, early on in the development process for
Blu-ray, to court and maintain support from a variety of hardware partners and Hollywood
studios.” (Sebok B. , 2009)
6 In disc technology pits are the physical representation of bits engraved into the disc surface.
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5.7 Imposing a Reverse Salient Despite Toshiba’s attempt to neutralize Sony’s influence on HD DVD, they were still able to
participate in working groups under the authority of the DVD Forum; the Advanced Access Content
System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) was one of those. Constituted by Sony, Toshiba, IBM,
Warner Bros., Panasonic, Microsoft, Intel and Disney in 2004, who agreed to share resources and
reach a consensus for a DRM standard for both formats. When the final specifications of AACS
were to be agreed upon in February 2006, one of the actors – who were also enrolled in the BDA
network – refused to approve and support the specifications (Barker, 2006). Toshiba who was eager
to have an early launch of HD DVD convinced the group to agree on a provisional version, one that
was less strict. Sony’s ability to have content protection features removed from the AACS
specifications could eventually threaten the support from movie studios in HD DVD’s global
network, as DRM had a high priority in Hollywood, but again Toshiba was unable to prevent Sony
from hampering their efforts (Sebok B. , 2009). The result was that AACS was successfully
attacked less than a year after its release (AACS LA, 2007). It had become a reverse salient of the
HD DVD format, which threatened the stability and support of its global network.
The reason why Sony remained unaffected by the compromise of AACS was that they in parallel
with their involvement in AACS LA had cooperated, outside the DVD Forum with Cryptography
Research and Twentieth Century Fox on a complementing DRM system to AACS. The system
featured a virtual machine that could examine the host system to see if the player had been
tampered with, and crave execution of downloaded code to patch insecure systems. In essential, it
added the features removed from AACS. They labeled it BD+. AACS in combination with BD+
became a new actor in its own right, which improved the stability of BD’s global network, because
studios uncertainty in AACS only affected the HD DVD (BusinessWire, 2005).
5.8 Mutual Shaping of Actors By 2005, Toshiba had not yet decided on any video compression codec to use in HD DVD, and
therefore they had a “HD DVD shoot-out for new codecs” (Bracke, 2007). It was a mere
coincidence that Microsoft, who at the time was neutral to both formats, in a demonstration of their
new video compression codec, VC-1 to Warner Brothers, were encouraged to participate in the
shoot-out with VC-1. In the process of interacting with Warner, Microsoft became aware of its
interest in a HD disc format, which led to enrollment of Microsoft and the VC-1 codec in the local
network (Bracke, 2007).
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The decision made by the DVD Forum to vote for VC-1 was not the only factor contributing to
Microsoft’s decision to side with HD DVD. Microsoft, traditionally a software company, worked in
cooperation with Disney to develop HDi, an interactivity layer, which could provide users with a
new experience in interacting with the interactive materials, included on the new HD discs. Disney
was a supporter of the BDA, but because BD deviated in its implementation of AACS, Microsoft
would have to implement two completely different authoring systems to support both BD and HD
DVD; thus when the DVD Forum decided to use both the VC-1 codec and HDi, and because
BDA’s Board of Directors voted for a Java-based solution for interactivity provided by Sun
Microsystems, Microsoft decided to side with HD DVD exclusively (Bracke, 2007).
Disney had approached Microsoft and said, “Can we make it [hi-def] a programmable platform”
(Bracke, 2007). This is relevant to the case, because it shows that the HD optical disc had another
meaning to Disney and Microsoft, it was not just seen as a movie format, it was a programmable
platform where interactive games could be embedded inside the movie (Bracke, 2007).
What happened in the case of Microsoft was a “process of mutual shaping”, this is interesting to
the analysis because according to Law & Callon, ” it is important to understand that actors are not
simply shaped by the networks in which they are located […], but they also influence the actors
with which they interact” (Law & Callon, 1992).
5.9 Market Introduction and Endgame Sony had another trump to play in the format battle, their PlayStation game console, which gave
Sony an advantageous relation to the game studios. By considering the game console as a
neighboring actor having its own network consisting of the game console, console games, game
developers, game studios, and game enthusiast among others, Sony’s decision to implement Blue-
ray in the PlayStation 3 enrolled that network in Blu-ray’s global network. The game studios
interest in the project – needless to say – was the prospect of selling more games.
The DVD Forum had the support of Microsoft and thus their Xbox game console, but the approach
that Microsoft and Toshiba took to enroll the Xbox’s gamer-network was the creation of an external
HD DVD drive, which owners of the X-box had to purchase separately from the game console itself
– worse was it, that it only supported playback of movies – not games (Bracke, Console Wars:
PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-On, 2006), thus it failed to catch the interest of the entire
game industry and its actors. The enrollment of the console-networks in the global networks
provided further resources to the local networks.
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After years of struggles to create a local network and stabilize the global network, the negotiation
space was about to close, as especially the time provided was about to run out as streaming services
started to threat the success of any high definition disc format that would enter the market (Sebok B.
, 2009). By April 2006 Toshiba released the first HD DVD player, more than a year later than
promised. The late finalization of AACS had affected content providers and hardware makers
(Williams, 2006). As Toshiba and HD DVD was first-to-market the race could have been over, but
the Blu-ray players followed shortly after. The global network was now expanded by multitudes as
critical articles in the public press now analyzed the formats, and they were particularly interested in
the number of titles released for each format.
In 2007, after the release of players for both formats, the inability to agree on a unified standard was
still unsatisfying to some of the actors. In 2007, LG unveiled a dual-format player, while Warner
Bros. showed a prototype disc that held both a HD DVD and BD layer so it was compatible with
players for both formats. An example of interpretive flexibility of the high definition optical disc
was possible because of the consortiums inability to cooperate, but neither solution proved viable
due to increased production costs (Sebok B. , 2009).
Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 2-to-1 by August 2007 and the global networks of both formats had been
stable for almost two years, when Paramount and DreamWorks Animation, who had supported both
formats since 2005, surprisingly decided to drop BD in favor of HD DVD; the lower price of HD
DVD players was the formal reason, but the real reason was probably intermediaries , in form of
“$150 million to produce HD versions of their movies exclusively as HD-DVD” (Dediu, 2012). The
exchange of money for their support was a final attempt by Toshiba to strengthen its global network
and thereby put and end to the dispute.
A year after the first successful attack on AACS leading to inept attempts from AACS LA to press
legal actions on the websites where the key was disclosed, and their inability to prevent further
attacks caused Hollywood to lose patience with the Digital Rights Management system provided in
HD DVD and make the shift to Blu-ray. In January 2008, Warner dropped its support of HD DVD
exclusively on BD (Warner Bros., 2007) and Paramount quickly followed suit. Now Blu-ray had
the majority of the major Hollywood studios lined up, and press releases from the three largest
retailers in America in February, stated that Netflix, BestBuy, and Wall-Mart said they would phase
out HD DVD (Walmart, 2008). That was the deathblow to Toshibas HD DVD format. Actors in the
global network thereby closed the negotiation space provided since the local network failed to
deliver a satisfying Digital Rights Management system (Sebok B. , 2009).
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6 Conclusion Cross-industry support, especially from Hollywood studios was determining to who would come
out as victor and vanquished. Both Sony and Toshiba tried to lure Hollywood studios into their
respective global network; the means was what was most crucial to a movie industry suffering from
piracy and theft of intellectual property, improved DRM, and the movie industry certainly wanted a
more robust DRM solution for a future format to prevent this.
By analyzing the efforts of the competing consortiums to build and stabilize their networks and
subsequently their ability impose themselves as an obligatory passage point between the local and
the global networks, we are now able to see that Toshiba’s lack of ability to neutralize Sony in the
critical stage of design specification, due to Sony’s role as Principal Member in the DVD Forum,
gave Sony the ability to make decisions to stalemate decision processes related to HD DVD, which
delayed Toshiba’s establishment of an obligatory passage point. Furthermore, Sony’s involvement
in AACS LA gave them the ability to make AACS a reverse salient in HD DVD, which
subsequently caused destabilization of HD DVD’s global network when studios gave up their
support, meanwhile Sony’s ability to retain control of all transactions between its local and global
networks paved the way for Blu-ray to come out victorious.
The motive for inventing a new format by an actor is to position itself as a stronger actor in the
global network, which was Sony’s motive to challenge the DVD Forum, and the reason why they
refused to create a joint negotiation space was because Sony had too much to lose, not just in the
form of ceded patents and license revenues, but also its possibility to change the existing power
structure in the home video market and become a stronger actor in that network.
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7 References Barker, D. (2006, February 15). Is AACS Delayed Again for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc? Retrieved
2012 12, 2012, from Embedded: http://www.embedded.com/design/other/4013026/Is-AACS-delayed-again-for-HD-DVD-and-Blu-ray-Disc-
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