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Paramount to Drop HD DVD?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the this-might-be-it-folks dept.

zeromemory writes "The Financial Times reports that " Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers' recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end." According to the Times, Warner Brother's recent defection to Blu-Ray allowed Paramount to terminate their exclusive relationship with HD DVD. Universal Studios remains the only major studio to exclusively support the HD DVD format, though rumors have surfaced that their contract may also contain a termination provision similar to that exercised by Paramount."

3 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. already denied by paramount by Jesus_Corpse · · Score: 5, Informative

    Paramount already denied this:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aQMGgh2LV_bU&refer=japan

    There's only a clausule that it is permitted for Paramount to drop hd-dvd if they think it's needed.

  2. Paramount Denies by quantumplacet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Paramount had denied this allegation. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=178864

  3. Re:Winner is the Consumer by gnuman99 · · Score: 4, Informative

    1 or 2 Mbps or Megabits per second. 1MB broadband - wtf does that mean? 1MB download total?

    MB => megabyte
    Mb => megabit

    MB/s => megabytes per second. Generally used to describe disk speed, memory speed (in the past, now in GB/s)
    Mb/s or Mbs => magabits per second. USed to describe network speeds.

    1 byte = 8 bits unless you are living in the 70s.

    BTW, 1.5 Mbps is one of the standard speeds for ADSL and would net you about 177kB/s download rate. Going at full throttle, that gives you 14.5GB/day. On 7.5Mbps speed, or 5x faster, that would give you 72.5GB/day. Since HD movies now are probably around 25-30 GB/2hours or 15GB/h, to watch that real time, you'd need a 36Mbps broadband minimum or download speed of 4.3MB/s. Since HD content will be less compressed on the 50GB discs, you'll need about 70Mbps for that to download.

    For regular DVDs, they tend to be about 3GB/h so you'd need a 7Mbps service minimum to be able to watch DVD quality movies real time.

    Neither of the scenarios will be a reality for vast majority of the Internet users. If it costs you $1.5/GB to get the stuff in network charges, the HD content would cost you $50-$100. The DVD would be about $12. A mailed rental DVD costs you a lot less than that and even buying one may be cheaper.

    So yes, you are correct. DL is *way* off in the digital future, just keep the darn units correct.