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Paramount to Drop Blu-Ray for HD-DVD

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the eggs-and-baskets dept.

JM78 writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation will be dropping support for Blu-ray Disc and going solely with HD-DVD for their next gen DVDs. "Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, said consumers seeking to switch to high-definition DVDs will be enticed by the movies available for HD-DVD players. He added the lower price for the Toshiba devices will appeal to the family market. 'It's a game-changer, what they're doing, and it's why we decided to throw in with them,' Katzenberg said."

8 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, right. by taskiss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I smell someone making an argument to get a better deal.

    --
    - real hackers don't have sigs -
    1. Re:Yeah, right. by Araxen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm backing whomever gets sub $100 first. Blu-ray doesn't appear to be too aggressive in the pricing part of this war. The dvd's themselves are a stalemate are far as I'm concerned. I'll be surprised if any studio will actually fill up an entire blu-ray dvd to make HD-DVD look that much more inferior of a format so it all comes down to price for me.

      The studios will go wherever the biggest user base is eventually.

    2. Re:Yeah, right. by John_Booty · · Score: 5, Funny

      > by Seumas (6865) on Tuesday August 21, @01:08AM (#20300997)
      > My understanding is that HD-DVD does not do uncompressed audio
      > like Blu-Ray. That alone is enough to sell me on Blu-Ray. I
      > spent $20,000 on the audio system for my home entertainment
      > center and I want the best quality media. I don't care if I
      > can buy a HD-DVD player for $100 cheaper than a Blu-Ray --
      > if the quality isn't there, it isn't of interest.

      > by ResidntGeek (772730) on Tuesday August 21, @01:18AM (#20301043)
      > HD-DVD does support mandatory Linear PCM, so no worries there.

      I like how that guy spent $20,000 on audio equipment, but can't do 30 seconds of research. I really need some clients like him. :)

      --

      OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
    3. Re:Yeah, right. by WARM3CH · · Score: 5, Informative

      LPCM support is mandatory for both standards. However, you maybe surprised to know that Dolby TrueHD, which is a lossless compression method, is mandatory for HD-DVD and is only optional for Blue-ray. As a result, most of the HD-DVD titles come with the audio compressed with TrueHD and no LPCM (selecting only one of the mandatory options), saving between 2:1 to 4:1 on storage space while blue-ray titles, should always carry the LPCM soundtrack and in practice rarely include a TrueHD track. Carrying only LPCM means that all other nice features of TureHD is going to be missed: dialog normalization, Dynamic range compression, downmixing to any arbitrary number of channels, etc...

  2. Money Talks by JackSpratts · · Score: 5, Informative

    Blogger "Swanni" says the HD-DVD folks coughed up 100 mil to help Paramount reach the decision.

    - js.

    http://www.tvpredictions.com/bluraypay082007.htm
  3. Re:What's the Motive? by ytsejammer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really? Has there really been a major outcry among studios that DVD was just too small? If there has been, I haven't been aware of it.

    Besides, do you really think there will be another physical format after this? I'd be willing to bet that by the time this format war is finished and another one ready to begin, digital distribution will be quite ubiquitous.

  4. Re:The End of this Format War? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Links to top A/V sites:

    http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p= 11351599
    http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=273
    htt p://www.guidetohometheater.com/hddiscplayers/1206p s3blu/index3.html
    http://www.insert25.com/playsta tion-3/ps3-better-console-or-blu-ray-player/
    http ://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-dvd-bluray/1927/sh ootout-3-blu-ray-disc-players-page9.html

    I could go on, but I don't need to. It says more that http://hdtvmagazine.com/ uses the PS3 as their "reference" player for BluRay. So does the fact that http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/ used it as well.

    --
    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  5. Not Nintendo by McFadden · · Score: 5, Informative

    They aren't selling below cost to kill a competitor, it's just that they've chosen to lose money on the consoles in order to make money selling games. That's nothing more than Sony and Nintendo have been doing for years.
    I'm amazed the debate has managed to last this long without someone pointing out that Nintendo don't do this, and as far as I know, never have with their consoles. The 'profit on every console sold' manta is one of the fundamental pillars of their business. I thought pretty much everyone knew that one.