Digital Home Thoughts: HP Backpeadles on Blu-ray Support Over DRM

"Seemingly reversing its stance in next-generation DVD battle, Hewlett-Packard has asked Blu-ray to re-think its planned copyright protection and instead implement the "managed copy" feature found in HD DVD, which would enable consumers to copy movies to their PCs and stream them across a network. HP additionally requested that Blu-ray implement interactive menus using iHD, also found in HD DVD. iHD -- developed by Toshiba and Microsoft -- will bring advanced interactivity to DVD movies and is slated to be natively supported by Windows Vista. "We're still supporting Blu-ray, but we're very serious that we want these technologies. If in the end, they're supported in one and then not the other; we'll have to make a choice," Weber told Reuters."



HA! Consumers will make that choice, not HP (or any other company). HP wishes they had this kind of sway, but in truth HP is a shell of its former self thanks to the horrible management of Carly Fiorina. In the end HP will offer both HD DVD and Blu-ray with their PCs and consumers will make the choice. My gut feeling is that they will just put a hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray drive in and all this posturing by HP is just to make them feel like they actually matter these days with strategic decisions in the Windows community.