Intel explains main reason to back HD DVD instead of Blu-ray

October 6, 2005

While Microsoft has given many reasons to why it favours HD DVD over Blu-ray,
apparently the main reason why Intel decided to back HD DVD is due to its mandatory support for Managed Copying. As many consumers would be interested in building up a library of their movies on their PC such as to stream about the house or carry on a portable device, the AACS DRM used in HD DVD supports Managed Copying and allows consumers to do just that, while at the same time preventing unauthorised copying.

As Intel is generally neutral when it comes to new technology, they would be happy to support Blu-ray if they offer that one essential feature without any issues or complications. Apparently, as the Managed Copy feature is handled by the AACS DRM and not the optical disc format itself, Blu-ray can technically support that feature since it uses the same DRM system as HD DVD. As a result, Blu-ray backers denied claims saying Blu-ray discs will not allow copying. The AACS DRM covers both Managed Copying and network streaming.

'The reason we provided support for HD-DVD is that basically it has committed to several features. Specifically, the mandatory managed copy,' said Donald McDonald, vice president and general manager of Intel's digital home group.

Managed copy ensures that users can copy the HD content to a PC or media centre for accessing anywhere in the home and on to portable devices.

'We have not heard an unequivocal statement from the Blu-ray camp to say that you'll be able to have mandatory managed copy without any kind of complications and any kind of issues,' McDonald said. 'The opportunity is for Blu-ray to unequivocally commit to having exactly the same consumer friendly features.'

A little more info can be read on this PCWorld article.

While some sophisticated form of DRM has been expected for the DVD generation, the ability to copy content onto a HD will be a very useful feature, especially for those interested in a video library based system. However, hopefully the capacity of hard drives will improve to some extent over the next few years as it will take a RAID of several high capacity (>300GB) HD's just to store any decent number of movies :p, assuming that movies will occupy the most of the HD DVD's or Blu-ray's dual-layer capacity.

Feel free to discuss about Blu-ray and HD DVD on our Satellite, HD-TV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD Forum.

Source: PC Pro - Desktop Computers