I personally don’t regard going to the pictures as proper night out, more a way of avoiding alcohol on a Sunday evening.

But for those who prefer to watch their movies on the sofa with a glass of wine, the good news is the next generation DVD format war is over – Sony won!

Well perhaps not such good news for some early adopters who will soon be putting their HD DVD players in the loft next to their laser disk player, beta max video and eight-track music system.

But was this a war worth winning as more and more on-demand movie services become available online?

“,”

This week I thought I would step off the social networking soapbox and take you to the movies instead.

I personally don’t regard going to the pictures as proper night out, more a way of avoiding alcohol on a Sunday evening.

But for those who prefer to watch their movies on the sofa with a glass of wine, the good news is the next generation DVD format war is over – Sony won!

Well perhaps not such good news for some early adopters who will soon be putting their HD DVD players in the loft next to their laser disk player, beta max video and eight-track music system.

But was this a war worth winning as more and more on-demand movie services become available online?

Last Tuesday, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida fell on his own sword by announcing that they where to cease development and manufacture of the HD DVD player.

The announcement came after a string of major retailers and rental companies announced their preference for Blu-ray, the format developed by Sony.

Last week Wal-Mart abandoned HD in favour of Blu-ray, a reaction to last month’s announcement by Warner Brothers, the largest media company releasing content in both formats, that it would now offer DVDs solely in Blu-ray.

Now, I’ve never been a collector of films. I never saw the point of owning something I’d watch once then have to dust for the rest of my life.

But perhaps the pleasure of ownership doesn’t just come from being able to watch your favorite film whenever you want to or from lending it to a friend never to be seen again.

Like the prized collection of music CDs hanging on most living room walls, movie collections for some people are an important expression of their individuality.

I still acquire my music on CD even though my CD player has been unplugged for years. Like most, I use my computer and iTunes to manage and listen to it. It’s also pretty hard to gift wrap a download and give it to someone as a present.

So the war may be over, but will consumers, who have been waiting to see which format would succeed, start buying Blu-ray players in their masses?

I think not. More likely they will end up with Blu-ray drives in the computers and games consoles now employed as their home entertainment hub.

Steve Jobs, however, begs to differ. With broadband now ubiquitous, removable media (like CDs and DVDs) are theoretically no longer needed. The new MacBook Air comes without a removable media drive, much to the dismay of even the most loyal Mac lovers.

There is a practical reality that broadband in the UK just isn’t quite fast enough yet to live the download dream, but I suspect there is also a psychological need to own physical content amongst those that covert it.

Whether the pleasure of ownership will remain important to the download generation and that the format war was worth winning, only time will tell.

Although I have already bought the most important present – the one to myself – well in advance of the festive period. I’m now the proud owner of a Virgin Media V+ box and a massive plasma television.

I will of course let the assembled relatives watch it too, so actually it is really a present to them and not just me. I hope they appreciate my generosity.

In fact while I’m in such a benevolent mood, I might as well buy them a PlayStation3 too, if I can get hold of one that is.

The V+ box is Virgin Media’s rather belated answer to the Sky+ box, the personal video recorder (PVR) from arch media rival BSkyB. You can record and pause live television at will, so I’ve absolutely no excuse for missing the Queen’s speech this year.

2007 has been a fairly ‘annus horribilis’ for Virgin Media after a spat with BSkyB resulted in the loss of popular channels Sky News and Sky One (home of the Simpsons) for its subscribers. Many switched to Sky as a result.

“,”

With exactly a week to go, it must be time for me to go Christmas shopping.

Although I have already bought the most important present – the one to myself – well in advance of the festive period. I’m now the proud owner of a Virgin Media V+ box and a massive plasma television.

I will of course let the assembled relatives watch it too, so actually it is really a present to them and not just me. I hope they appreciate my generosity.

In fact while I’m in such a benevolent mood, I might as well buy them a PlayStation3 too, if I can get hold of one that is.

The V+ box is Virgin Media’s rather belated answer to the Sky+ box, the personal video recorder (PVR) from arch media rival BSkyB. You can record and pause live television at will, so I’ve absolutely no excuse for missing the Queen’s speech this year.

2007 has been a fairly ‘annus horribilis’ for Virgin Media after a spat with BSkyB resulted in the loss of popular channels Sky News and Sky One (home of the Simpsons) for its subscribers.  Many switched to Sky as a result.

Virgin Media and other pay-TV providers have complained to Ofcom about what they are calling the ‘Sky viscous circle’. Sky has the power to buy the best content because it has the most subscribers, and it gets the most subscribers because it has the best content.

However, Virgin Media plans to fight back in 2008 with broadband.

Next year, Virgin Media will begin selling a 50 megabit-per-second internet service. That compares with its current top speed of 20 megabits, versus 16 megabits for BSkyB.

Faster is better for many reasons, not least because it will allow me to download High Definition movies in minutes, which I can then enjoy on my new mighty plasma screen.

Virgin Media can offer the faster service because it delivers broadband mostly over fibre optic cables, rather than the BT copper phone lines used by BSkyB.

And now they can offer their customers a surprisingly easy to use PVR too.  Previous digital services from Virgin Media (or TeleWest as it was then) have, in my experience, been a bit flaky.

So I was bit worried when no less than four Virgin Media engineers in three separate vans turned up to install the V+ box!  I wondered how complicated was this thing I’d ordered if it needed four people to install it, and just how big was it if three vans were needed to deliver it?

However, despite having 80 hours of storage space, it turned out to be modestly proportioned and three of the four engineers were clearly just skiving.

Even better, it seems the V+ box is so easy to use, even the other-half has mastered it!

After a lifetime of being asked to record programmes I hate, knowing that failure would result in accusations of incompetence, and success the prospect of having to watching them, I’m glad to be out of the recording firing line – the best Christmas present ever.

This involves downloading some software the Beeb have, rather unimaginatively, called the iPlayer before you can access their archive of programmes.

Unfortunately, you need a PC running Windows XP for it to work. Although BBC assure us that Mac and Windows Vista versions are definitely on the way.

The iPlayer has apparently been in development for some time, but has been delayed by technical and regulatory problems for many months. In fact the iPlayer is still in beta, which is software developer’s jargon for: we know it’s still full of bugs, would you all be so kind as to help us find them all?’.

Meanwhile, its commercial rivals Sky, ITV and Channel 4 have all managed to release their own.

Now these guys had some serious commercial problems moving their content on to the web. They need people to either pay for the service or work out how to sell advertising in an on-demand world.

They all came up with different Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions, which require clever technology to stop people copying or sharing programmes once downloaded.

The BBC’s content is free (well, paid for by us via the TV licence).  So why not just upload all the programs to You Tube and be done with it?

Or, if You Tube is too scary a place, just put it on the BBC websites.

But the BBC have missed the opportunity to let us view its content with good old Internet Explorer because, despite being free to air, they too feel it needs deploying with DRM strings attached.

They sell many of their programmes abroad and don’t want to risk this lucrative revenue stream from being undermined.

The iPlayer lets you download BBC content up to seven days from its initial terrestrial broadcast. It then automatically deletes it from your hard drive 30 days later. Should you be tempted to keep it longer, or indeed upload it to You Tube yourself, it will prevent you.

The reason the web works is that we can pretty much access all of it using our web browser of choice.  If I had to fire up a special browser, provided by each site I wanted to view, I’d probably not bother.

The BBC have simply added yet another piece of proprietary technology we need to view broadcast content online, despite having the advantage of not having to charge for it.

The non-commercial status of the BBC is often challenged by other broadcasters, who complain of unfair advantages this subsidy provides.

If the BBC had provided its content that we have, essentially, already paid for DRM free via a simple web browser, they would have silenced their critics.