CEO of Seagate Technology Bill Watkins believes that the war is not between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but instead, he believes that "the war is over physical distribution versus electrical and Blu-ray and HD lost that." He answered my questions in my previous article about the format wars, and Bill is absolutely correct in his evaluation.
Bill Watkins gave quite the speech during a breakfast meeting this week. He stated that the big winner in the format wars is neither HD-DVD or Blu-ray. It is electronic distribution, and the companies that are able to take advantage of it.
It all makes sense. With services like Hulu popping up everywhere, it seems the perfect way to go. Video being delivered on-demand is a hit. Makers of IPTV services (video that is delivered to your home on-demand) are likely to get a huge boost in the coming years.
(Image Credit: Thomas Hawk)
Watkins continued on by saying that Hollywood will need to get into the delivery of content to people's homes. "They [the people] will watch lousy content if it is easy to do," he said. After all, who goes to a video store anymore? My videos are delivered via Netflix, and when there are no great movies on television, I resort to watching shows like American Gladiators.
He also explained how all this data--which will be delivered on-demand--is great for hard drive makers. People download data. They need someplace to store those gigabytes of data. Those terabyte hard drives that you have been reading about, which you have yet to purchase, are going to come in use to the everyday computer user, one day.
He also made reference to many other topics of interest:
- Excuses about the lack of an SD drive from Seagate, but it will be coming out soon.
- He believes flash memory will never completely take over the hard drive market.
- Talks about the U.S. economy
- Talks about U.S. immigration policy.
"We used to say that what is good for GM is good for America. Now, what is good for the stockholders is not necessarily good for America. That drives me crazy."
How right he is.
