Remember how I was talking about all those teasers about how DVD could add HD back into itself. Well, today, introducing DVD Download DL.
Engadget totally butchered what it was. In fact, they made a blog post which completely didn’t talk about the announcement… just re-hashed the “super upconversion” news which is old.
What is DVD Download DL? It’s a new spec that will allow for DVD formats to be transferred over the internet, including HD DVD formats. In fact, despite HD DVD being dead, the group just updated the spec. Why? Because HD DVD is being rolled back into DVD.
DVD Download DL players will enable transmission of HD-quality versions of video from the web. You buy one DVD, and it has two versions; the Standard Definition version on the disc, and an HD version which streams over the web.
Of course, older DVD players won’t see the HD version. You’ll get a notice when you access the menu item saying “You need a DVD Download DL player and an internet connection to watch the HD version of this video”.
And, what DVD Download DL players can you expect? Xbox 360, Window Vista, and Mac, as well as just about every DVD player Toshiba ships from now on.
Also, all these player will have “super upscaling” technology, so your old DVD movie library will look better on your HDTV.
Now, some purists will argue that this is bad. Toshiba isn’t trying to sell you on DVD with HD. Toshiba has given up the video nerd market to Blu-Ray. What Toshiba and Microsoft are going after… is the 95 to 99% of the rest of the world that is still using DVD.
So, CH DVD and DVD Download DL are what Toshiba and Microsoft will use to fight Blu-Ray. The more the merrier I say.