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"Having the format war end is a very good thing for the industry," said Wireless Home president Matt Peters. For the Naples, Fla-based home integration company, Peters said it's important to be able to confidently recommend the format that will bring highest resolution content available today.
"In terms of the interactive elements available through network products like the PlayStation 3 offering, it's too early to tell how influential that will be," he said. "But as we're watching the trends in the industry, internet-connected devices are likely to be competing more regularly with online downloads as a format."
Support will be initiated through a firmware update later this month. Sony said users will need an Internet connection and at least 1 Gbyte of local storage to download and access BD-LIVE features. The update allows move studios to offer special and exclusive content to their titles. Sony announced two titles, the sci-fi thriller The 6th Day and recent comedy release Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Both titles will offer content not available on the discs.
Allen Nejelski of Water Mill, NY-based home integrator Home Technology Experts said the ability to download additional content to Blu-ray players is a positive evolution for the market, even though he thinks game players aren't the best-suited machines for the technology. "Whether you're talking about the PS3 or [Microsoft's] Xbox, these machines were never designed to be the primary player," he said. "But that added download capability is certainly not hurting us."
Nejelski also expressed relief the format war is over. "Now that they have picked a format, we're going through those Blu-rays pretty quickly," he said.
IIya Biling, vice president of business development for Lagotek, a Bellevue, Wash.-based residential technology systems company, said now that the Blu-ray enabled PlayStation 3 allows for two-way connections for content access, it adds another point of control for customers who are looking to integrate home systems. "I don't think it will centralize control, but it offers two-way communication, and it might open the avenue to control homes through the PlayStation 3," he said.
The much publicized format wars between Toshiba's HD DVD technology and Sony's Blu-ray offering, which the company promoted as a key feature of the PS3, ended when Toshiba declared on February 19 that it would no longer manufacture or market HD DVD players.
One home integrator expressed some ambivalence about format issue but said he was glad it had been resolved. "I don't know that many home theatre customers we deal with are going to be excited about that feature," said John Oliver, CTO of Dallas-based home integrator Cutting Edge PC's. "We found most consumers are happy to have us set up a device that will just play the movie."
Oliver said with a client age base over 40 years old, Sony's decision to launch the feature on the PS3 also limits its appeal. "Generally our consumers didn't ask too much about gaming," he said. Oliver says he's glad a format standard has been decided upon.
Wireless Homes' Peters added to the chorus of opinions regarding the end of the Blu-ray battle, which he said allows his business to better focus its sales efforts. "Whether in the from of a PS3 or stand alone Blu-ray player, at the end of the day the end of the format war is just a very good thing for everyone involved," Peters said. "Except for Toshiba, I guess."
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