'Bye 2005, Hi Def (Pt 1)
 Hey Santa, where's my HD DVD player? Part I: 'Bye 2005
It’s New Year’s Eve 2005. Do you know where our HD-DVD hardware and software is?
Call me naïve … or stubborn … or a cockeyed optimist … or just dumber ‘n dirt. But I have here in front of me Exhibit A, being a press release datelined exactly 359 days ago out of Las Vegas, Los Angeles AND Tokyo, declaring that “Several companies have announced plans to release HD DVD hardware and software by the end of 2005.”
I’m a patient fellow, and we have some time remaining, some minutes anyhow, for those companies to make good on that – uh – “plan.”
Fifty-one weeks ago, Blu-ray Disc Association staged a fitfully bizarre press conference in a institutional-drab, non-descript Las Vegas Convention Center meeting room, where “Megatrends” bestselling author and futurist John Naisbitt was the featured attraction. This ink-stained wretch of a reporter, no doubt made a tad more irritable by having to stand at the threshold of the room, just outside the open doors, craning my neck to glimpse the proceedings, was mouthing off to a content executive friend of long standing, who seemed as bemused as I was by Blu-ray’s Naisbitting the press hands that write about it: “This is what you do,” I declared in wise-ass mode, “when you have no news.” I only said what I could read on the faces of other journalists in the crowd, who no doubt were thinking, “What the f--- is this about? We came here to get some juicy facts about high-def discs hitting the market, not to a Borders book signing.”
Shortly thereafter, the same complement of press freeloaders – our motto is “We never met a buffet spread and open bar we didn’t like” – repaired to a Bellagio Hotel uber-hip nightclub, where the HD DVD forces staged a razzle-dazzle show of strength in numbers, replete with a big-screen trailer of HD DVD movies coming our way …. right … about … now!
This year … or actually next year, it’s worth noting that The Inter-Galactic Forces of Blu-Ray have considerably upgraded their press bling-bling to a – natch – nightclub, Jet at The Mirage, for A Celebration of the Format that Will Revolutionize Home Entertainment. After all this waiting, and the countless coverage expended on this next generation, I would not expect anything less.
Not to be outdone, and even to outdo its own Hollywoody 2005 CES event, HD DVD Promotion Group Presents Dinner & A Screening at CES, at The Strip’s newest attraction, Wynn Hotel & Casino.
Uh-oh. With not much time left before I turn into a pumpkin with Part I of this bifurcated blog that is two years in the making, I better go post.
But, like General Douglas MacArthur, I will return, like Sidney Sheldon, on the Other Side of Midnight.
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