The likely winners in the format battle for Internet video downloads will be Microsoft and DivX, according to a new research report from the Yankee Group.
"The time was ripe for this analysis; consumers are beginning to transfer content from their PCs to their televisions over home networks or on recordable media," said Yankee Group senior media and entertainment strategies analyst Ryan Jones. "However, for PC-to-TV content sharing to mature, device manufacturers and content owners must agree on video formats for encoding and content protection that allow seamless content access, management, and playback."
Analyzing formats from Real, Microsoft, and DivX, plus various dimensions like playback quality, security, cost and "industry momentum," Yankee Group said DivX now leads because the international file trading community supports it and chipset vendors "have been quick to market" with affordable decoding. But Microsoft gets the nod for overall quality and security, Yankee Group continued, though Jones said device manufacturers in due course will be able to integrate both formats into their designs.
Jones predicted June 16 that the retail industry is going to feel the impact of the two formats soon enough. He said 30-50 percent of DVD players will have either one or both by the end of 2004.
"(A)s video chipset manufacturers refine and economize components," he said, "content owners become more comfortable with Internet content distribution, and consumers seek out new video content on the Web."
