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NYT Confirms Movie Studios Paid to Support HD DVD
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has confirmed the story that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation were paid $150 million for an exclusive HD-DVD deal that will last 18 months. 'Paramount and DreamWorks Animation declined to comment. Microsoft, the most prominent technology company supporting HD DVDs, said it could not rule out payment but said it wrote no checks. "We provided no financial incentives to Paramount or DreamWorks whatsoever," said Amir Majidimehr, the head of Microsoft's consumer media technology group.'" We discussed Paramount's defection on Monday.
Did anyone really expect anything different?
Let's drag out all of Sony and friends general ledgers and see how much "promotional consideration" Target and Blockbuster got. I really don't get why people are making a big deal about a company making promotional deals. Let's be serious, these days $150 million is about enough to cover one big budget movie.
if they were paid to support one technology over another, isn't that illegal, anti-competitive and/or monopolistic behaviour by the HD-DVD consortium? If so, would it be illegal if the consortium were innocent but the payoff came from some backer who stands to gain from HD-DVD beating out Blu-Ray?
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
My initial reaction too was "Big deal! No story here!" But then I got to thinking. Is this really different than Microsoft using various incentives to get governments/schools/other customers to buy Microsoft products? Does it just feel different because it's a bunch of big evil corporations using shady practices to try and outdo each other?
I've been saying since this format war started though that if someone REALLY wants to win, they should just pony up a ton of money to get George Lucas to release the unmolested, Greedo-shoots-first Trilogy in their format.
Wake me when one format bites the dust and players for the other format are $100. Till then I'll make do with DVD's.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Main Entry: payola Pronunciation: pA-'O-l& Function: noun Etymology: 1pay + -ola (as in Pianola, trademark for a player piano) : undercover or indirect payment (as to a disc jockey or perhaps a movie studio like Paramount) for a commercial favor (as for promoting a particular recording or for promoting a flagging HD format) We report, slashdot decides...
I see this as the Iraq war, a seemingly endless struggle that will be good for everyone when it comes to an end. Somebody WIN already!
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
the checks were actually written by some Canadian company called BayStar Capital.
This is unfair competition, imo. Here's why...
You should never be able to pay a customer to specifically exclude a competitor. For example.. If you're paying a company a sum amounting to $10 to go with your product Y that costs $100 and exclude product X, it would mean your competitor would have to sell at $90 in order to compete - assuming both products essentially do the same thing. It artifically lowers the competitor's price... kind of like what has happened with AMD and Intel.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Now that combo Blu-Ray HD-DVD players are becoming increasingly available and cheap, any studio would be stupid to not take a cash payout for (what may end being an ultimately meaningless) format switch. With the format war continuing for at least another few years (by all likelihood), it's conceivable that mass adoption of combo players as they become affordable will mean that format difference will ultimately be of as little meaning as DVD+/-R is now. Besides, with adoption rates lagging so badly, the losses from switching to a less-popular format over the next 18 months are probably outweighed by the cash payment. Great business decision by Paramount.
I can do without their movies for that long.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I have a 720p projector. It looks fantastic showing HD-DVD, which I picked at random. It is really nice to get away from lame DVD artifacts, and I figure if blu-ray wins, I'll finally have an excuse to buy a PS3. But let's summarize the other options, based on previous slashdot articles:
0) "I haven't watched anything on a TV since 1970 and now I'm Jesus Christ"
1) "Even if you don't watch broadcast TV, all movies are crap too. Ditto for music."
2) "I watch TV and movies, but who would pay for them when you can steal, I mean find them online?"
3) "I've never bought a DVD, so they'll pry $25 out of my hands for a blu-ray/hd-dvd disc when hell freezes over - I get them from the library, which is also my only social outlet"
4) "I'll buy hd-dvd/blu-ray when it costs $10 and the discs are $1. My VCR is still running."
5) "Physical media is dead anyway, in fact I don't even _type_ anymore because it involves physical contact."
6) "All video formats are the same, and anyone who says otherwise is blind... I love my 12" vga monitor!"
7) "LINUX LINUX LINUX!!!! Microsoft can suck my dick."
8) "They all use DRM, so I'm going to boycott life, as soon as I get one."
9) "First post!"
10) "All companies are run by Nazis who also control your congresspeople, and you live in a police state that just wants to monitor what you watch. It's too late to do anything about it, but I'm Canadian, which means I'm an expert on how the US sucks."
11) "DVI / HDMI / HDCP / WTF"
So in summary, I have seen an actual HD-DVD played back on a quality LARGE screen, and it looks very very nice.
Probably too good for you, if you don't care about movies. Or if you have anything less than a 60" screen,
which is the same thing. I am COMPLETELY PISSED that there are two formats, and that the movie studios won't do both formats. Is it that big of a deal to master two discs? What a cluster fuck. If money changes hands, whatever. Hopefully there will be a decent dual format player soon. And don't get me started on why I can't rip a movie I paid for legally!
if they were paid to support one technology over another, isn't that illegal, anti-competitive and/or monopolistic behaviour by the HD-DVD consortium? If so, would it be illegal if the consortium were innocent but the payoff came from some backer who stands to gain from HD-DVD beating out Blu-Ray?
The market has a strange way of sorting some of this stuff out. While the players are several hundred dollars and the movies are well over $20 each, this is just a niche format at the moment. When the players are under $60 and the movies are under $15, wake me up. In the meantime, I'll stick with a Linux MCE setup and use the format that works in the movie jukebox. The last DVD player I bought retailed for under $30. Pre-viewed movies at Blockbuster are either 2 for $20 or 4 for $20. Only those with lots of cash will bother with the expensive formats. Right now they are in the Laserdisk catagory. Nice format, but limited selection at high prices. I did the Laserdisk thing. It had an advantage.. No copy protection. It met broadcast spec NTSC output unlike videotape.
The truth shall set you free!
I'm glad someone's making a revitalizing effort on the part of HD-DVD, even if it means handing out buckets of cash. My biggest reason for supporting HDDVD over BluRay (other than a long-time dislike for Sony) is that HDDVD does not have any form of region coding, while BluRay does. I haven't seen that point raised here on Slashdot before, so I'm at the point of wondering if A) it's even correct, and B) if I'm really the only one who cares.
We've seen big companies embrace globalization when convenient many times before, and then immediately turn around and implement artificial barriers so that consumers can't take advantage of that same global market (the stories here on Slashdot a few years ago about textbook manufacturers come to mind, where they would sell English versions of their textbooks in foreign countries at hugely discounted prices, and then fight over efforts of other companies and individuals to make those same books available back to customers in the USA).
Region coding ought to be universally despised. So far as I know, with HD-DVD I don't have to worry about it. But Sony, showing their true stripes once again, embraced it with BluRay.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
There is only one reason why someone would pay $150 million to buy the adoption of a particular format: The HD DVD people realized their preferred format was inferior, and could not possibly win in the marketplace in a fair competition on the merits.
In other words, the people who paid believed that the format they don't want to win, Blu-ray, is worth $150 million more than their HD DVD format in true value, so to even the score they had to pay.
That shouts very loudly to me. Someone with $150 million to spend has set the value of Blu-ray as being worth that much more than HD DVD. Thanks for the information. You have voted with your dollars, and shouted to everyone who thinks about it that Blu-ray should win.
From the New York Times article: "The battle over the competing high-definition DVD technologies has sputtered in recent months as Blu-ray discs have emerged as the front-runner. Blu-ray titles are sharply outselling HD offerings..."
Not only the corrupters, but the marketplace also, agree that Blu-ray is better.
I wonder how much it would cost to get Paramount and DreamWorks Animation to adopt 8-track tapes?
I wonder how much it would cost to get Paramount and DreamWorks Animation executives never to take showers or baths? Obviously, to them, everything is for sale, even their technical integrity.
If that kind of thing continues, the word "executive" will become synonymous with the word "sleaze".
No, I put Windows on it. I (unfortunately) knew what I was getting when I installed Windows. When I put in a Sony music CD, I was expecting to get music, not spyware. Slight difference.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
I'd go for Adam Smith rather then the silly upstart you mentioned for the idea of capitalism, and that idea is that in a perfect market economy we will get the best and cheapest goods possible.
Unfortunately, the perfect market cannot exist, and deals like the one discussed are moving us further away from it. Exclusive deals and trusts always hurt everyone except for the parties directly involved, because they hurt the market.
Which is why Smith (and Rand) are wrong, and capitalism works best under some kind of independent control.
Now that Paramount has lost Michael Bay as a result of this (for better or worse) I wonder if they'll re-evaluate their position...
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The question you should be asking is how much money the studios can expect to lose by not selling Blu Ray's for 18 months. They would have to sell a ton of discs to profit 150 million dollars in 18 months. Also, if someone has a Blu Ray player and wishes to purchase such modern classics as Shrek 3 and Blades of Glory, there is a possibility that they will be willing to wait 18 months. Looks to me like Paramount just got a ton of free cash to help keep HD-DVD alive for a few more months.
When I say I bought a house or a car. I have spent money to acquire the rights to the brick mortar, iron, labour everything that goes into the building of this house or car. There has been a transaction between the previous owner and me which says that the transaction was fair.
Now when you say that you have written a piece of work. Can you say that you have paid back for every piece of information that you used to produce that work. You cannot. There are literally millions of small pieces of information that goes into creating that work. It is true that a lot of creativity and effort goes into producing that work, but it is still built on a large amount of information that had required a lot of creativity, and effort. You never did pay for these pieces of information. You just used it and now you are trying to steal when you try to deny the right of those creators and their survivors (ie the public) to also enjoy the fruits of your labour, as you did theirs.
I am not against copyright, as long as it is copyright and not some kind of stupid "intellectual" property right. Copyright has a stated purpose, which is to allow creators to gain some payment for their efforts. But it is only that. Trying to make it into a perpetually owned property is an attempt to steal from the public domain. The same goes for patents, but the problem is less severe there.
In light of the above, copyright should be very limited in time, and scope. It should give some inalienable rights, such as attribution. But commercial rights should be severely curtailed. I believe, to just commercialize a product you should be required to register your work at the copyright office stating your intention to benefit from it, and providing a copy for its library. The right to benefit from it should be only for a very limited time, like 5 years (from the point of registration) allowing for one extension of another 5 years. Anything more in the Internet age is stupid and excessive. Works owned by Corporations should not be allowed to have an extension, that will make it more difficult for corporations to steal from the artists.
Everybody should be required to earn their living, and artists or RIAA/MPAA should not be above it. This means that no perpetually milking the only good thing that you produced.
There is a deeper meaning to the following quote by Newton which some people will never have the humility to understand.
"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
Help Needed: Does anyone have any idea why someone would pay $150 million to try to make HD DVD more popular? There's obviously a lot of money in it for someone, but I can't imagine why.
..." with a raw data transfer rate of 36.55 Mbit/s. [My emphasis]
Comparisons:
Blu-ray: "A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB..." with a raw data transfer rate of 53.95 Mbit/s. HD DVD: "HD DVD has a single-layer capacity of 15 GB and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB;
More comparisons: Blu-ray scratch resistance "has withstood direct abrasion by steel wool and marring with markers in tests" "HD DVD uses traditional material and has the same scratch and surface characteristics of a regular DVD."
"Blockbuster, the largest U.S. movie rental company, decided in June 2007 in favor of expanding Blu-ray support exclusively to an additional 1450 stores. The decision came following a trial in 250 rental stores, in which both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs were available. In the trial it has been found that more than 70% of high definitions rentals were Blu-ray discs." [My emphasis]
"According to a market research company Nielsen VideoScan, as of week ended August 12, 2007, weekly sales of Blu-ray discs were ahead of HD DVD with 66% of the market. In 2007 sales, Blu-ray leads with 66% of the market. Since inception, market share was 61% for Blu-ray and 39% for HD DVD."
This comment on the CDFreaks.com differences page is interesting, I have no idea whether it is valid: "To make a (HD)-DVD disc you need two moulding machines and an extra process to glue the two 0.6mm substrates together, which means you loose valuable seconds. Also the HD-DVD disc tolerances for flatness & thickness are extremely tight (twice more critical than that of normal DVD). To make a Blu-ray disc you need only 1 moulding machine and you don't have to glue the two substrates, which means less production time. In fact a Blu-ray disc can be compared with an up-side-down CD disc... which is very simple to make. As for disc tolerances of Blu-ray, these are comparable with normal DVD, resulting in an much more controllable production process. This means better yields and that future high-speed discs are easier to make. All in all, you might be able to upgrade DVD lines to make HD-DVD's, but in time the mass-volume production process itself will be less expensive for Blu-ray."
From CDFreaks pros and cons: "Blu-ray requires a much lower rotation speed of the disc to reach the specified transfer rate of 36Mbps."
And "Hybrid Discs -- Here we can find an advantage for Blu-ray, resulting from the new structure of the disc. Since the recording layer for Blu-ray data is only 0.1 mm away from the surface of the disc there is enough space below to integrate a complete 8.5 GB DVD DL disc."
(I have no connection whatsoever with either format, of course. My only interest is that the format that becomes popular be the best format technically.)
Not only the corrupters, but the marketplace also, agree that Blu-ray is better.
If that's the case, and consumers choose what's best, then why did VHS beat out Betamax, which had better video and audio quality across the board? Why is Windows the de-facto operating system for home computers?
You make it sound like the majority of consumers actually make informed decisions when they go out and buy electronics. I can only assume your post was written tongue in cheek, because it appears you infer that people actually go out and research the underlying technology of various products before they make their purchase.
Personally, I give Blu-Ray an automatic 25% edge in the market over HD-DVD because Blu-Ray sounds cooler, and "HD-DVD" has a sort of legacy sound to it. Seriously. I think that, to the average consumer, the name would have more bearing on their purchase than any technical aspects.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Why does this myth keep getting circulated. Please can we stop this now. The fact is that Betamax had mildly better video, indescernable to most people. Also VHS tapes were available in 2 hours varieties a long time before they were with Beta. You can have your two Beta tapes for a movie to my VHS one. Also, VHS were less restrictive with their license, so a lot more VHS movies were available than Betamax (this include Porn). And VHS let a lot more companies make their machines than Sony did, so there were more machines available.
//TODO: Insert catchy phrase
That does not rule out Microsoft providing financial incentiive to a HD-DVD intermediary organization who subsequently funneled the money to the studios.
Your Microsoft Windows monopoly dollars at work, killing competition and preventing the consumer marketplace from deciding the better solution.
I saw a comparison recently, I believe linked from AVSforum, that showed the replication price difference between the two - it showed that yes, Blu-Ray replication is somewhat more expensive, but not substantially so - and replication of single-layer Blu-Ray discs is actually *cheaper* than replication of dual-layer HD-DVD. That matters because most HD-DVD movies *have* to be dual layer, due to the size, whereas most Blu-Ray movies are still single layer.
I think that pretty well shoots the "but HD-DVD is cheaper!" argument directly to hell - while it's *strictly* true, the most common situation is one that is, in fact, less expensive. (Yes, the players are still more expensive... though I'm waiting for Samsung's BD-UP5000 so I can get one player, watch everything, and not have to worry anymore.)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I think thats a great idea about Lucas.
On the other hand, please explain how this is a "shady practice"?
I can only buy certain models of TVs at CostCo (PriceClub) compared to Circuit City. Models specifically made for CostCo, offered at a lowered price that you can't buy anywhere else. Target (I think, maybe K-Mart) only carries the Martha Stewart Line of household items. Howard Stern is exclusive on Sirius radio while Opie and Anthony are only on XM and have a deal to be broadcast over the air as well. RockStar is releasing exclusive content onto the 360 release of GTA4.
These are not shady practice's. This is very transparent for all the world to see (or guess if they're not researching) and is done everywhere. Go to McDonald's and get me a Pepsi will you. Oh right, you can't.
Grow up and realize companies have one purpose to make money for their stockholders, not to ensure you can watch any movie you want because you bought a specific player.
I don't know how this isn't illegal
Heres how its legal. Go into McDonald's and buy a Pepsi. Nonono, Coca-Cola won't do, I want a Pepsi. Hmm, they don't offer that? Strange... Okay... okay. Lets see. I have an XM radio here... could you tell me what channel Howard Stern is on? Ohhh, he's on Sirius only. Hmm, okay, okay I'm starting to see a trend here. So I'm at bed bath and beyond and I'm looking for Kirkland sheets, Oh those are only made for CostCo and Kirkland stores? WTF!?! What is happening?!?!
Ooooooh right maybe companies to have the ability to make exclusive contracts with other companies. Grow the hell up.
The fact is that Betamax had mildly better video, indescernable to most people.
That's true. Consumers were looking through the marketing filters when they made a choice, though. Betamax actually had a huge advantage over VHS in video sharpness, color noise and audio quality, especially as the battle progressed. Color on VHS looked like a Monet painting - fuzzy water colors. The Beta looked much closer to a direct broadcast signal. Most consumers were buying whatever Billy-Bob down the street had. He had a VHS because the early Beta machines were more expensive than VHS machines (because of the way the tape transports were built). Price usually beats function into second place.
The biggest driving force was the cost of blank tape. The first Beta and VHS tapes cost $22-$24 apiece. You wanted a machine to stretch that cost over as many hours of recording as possible. That got VHS the foothold.
The only time [consumer] Betamax started taking market share back from [consumer] VHS was when Beta-HiFi came out. It took the VHS camp a year to respond and created more expensive "8 head" VHS machines, which the Beta camp could do with two heads. "Gosh, 8 heads MUST be better". No, the VHS format needed that to make a marginally acceptable image at multiple speeds. At the same time, the Beta camp figured out how to make much less expensive tape transports, so cost was erased as a factor.
SuperBeta produced a measurable sharpness increase of 20% but all the VHS camp could do is relax the white clip circuits (VHS-HQ) by 20%. Consumers only saw the "20%" figure and concluded they must be the same thing without actually looking. You could turn SuperBeta on and off and see a real difference. Not so with the VHS-HQ switch. S-VHS was actually more akin to SuperBeta but that came years later and required special [expensive] tape. The VHS camp couldn't even respond to Beta-ED but by then it didn't matter for the consumer. Movie stores started stocking more VHS and that created an avalanche effect driving more consumers toward buying VHS machines. Game over for consumer Beta.
Broadcasters adopted the Beta format over the VHS format for news (originally) because of the dramatic quality differences. The VHS based news recorders were blown off the market within a year by Beta. This started the 25 year dynasty of Broadcast technical progression: BetaCam, BetaCam-SP, Digital BetaCam, BetaCam-SX, BetaCam-IMX, HDCam and HDCam-SR. If you saw the last several Star Wars movies, they were shot with HDCam - a Beta format derivative, not film.
At every turn, the consumer didn't look at quality or function one bit. The Beta transport could skip forward and backward at 20x speed with a viewable picture because of the transport design - something the VHS couldn't do. It made smaller Camcorders when they came out with full recording capacity which the VHS camp couldn't do. With a fresh eyeball, the Beta format was hands down the superior machine with lots of technical headroom, but the consumer ignored the facts and went with the flow. Oh well. Here's an ugly page with some technical differences between Beta and VHS, none of which mattered to consumers.
You can have your two Beta tapes for a movie to my VHS one.
I only recall a few Beta movies on two tapes and those were very early rare birds. The earliest Beta tapes were only one hour long but that was fixed quickly with Beta-II and L-750 tapes (which could do 3+ hours at Beta-II).
Most of the stuff on
Microsoft [...] said it could not rule out payment
but said it wrote no checks yet
"We provided no financial incentives [...] yet
fixed it...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Thanks for your answer. I didn't realize how little technical issues mattered, or how much money is involved in manipulating the outcome.
The "more money than brains" folks rule the world?
I don't think so. I think that one technically knowledgeable Slashdot reader could write one article about the technical merits, and have it published on Slashdot, and $150 million would seem like pocket change compared to the power of Slashdot readers telling all their friends which is the best.
I like Blu-ray only because it has a faster data rate and can hold more data. I plan to use whatever format becomes popular as a data backup method.
I don't watch Hollywood's goofy movies, and I recommend that people who want control their lives educate themselves about reality, not fantasy.
Last time, in the war over DVD-R and DVD+R (DVD+R is better technically), the manipulations caused DVD to become useful much later than it would otherwise have been. I suggest that we not let non-technical people have control over technical things.
I wish Slashdot readers would stop thinking that they are weak concerning matters such as this.
1:
Given most consumers are in no hurry to pick a format until one wins (most wouldn't want to drop $100 on one if they'ed have to get the ohter anyway in 2-3 years) and given it may take 18 or more months for one side to give in, Paramount may think the next 18 months don't matter. Why not get paid for farting around.
2:
Maybe Paramount is deliberately picking the wrong format, and the money is just a sweetener in the pot. If Blu-Ray wins, and Paramount goes Blu-Ray now, they sell one copy each of all their movies to interested parties. If they go HD, then Blu-Ray they can sell the same movie twice to some viewers.
3.
Paramount isn't always known as the brightest company. They have a record of messing up with one of their best known properties. (Star Trek)
4.
Paramount can't LOSE major sales from doing this, only delay them. Even if everyone boycotted them until they swapped back to Blu-Ray, once they do, who else can you get Paramount movies on Blu-Ray from?
Final note:
HD vs Blu-Ray shows that the world of movies / music is *inherently* more messed up than physical goods. No matter how shoddy of a format Paramount brings to the table (even DivX) you're not allowed to get a better version of "The Search for Spock" from anyone else. It's not in the best interests of the media companies to share, so I don't see this changing anytime soon.