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Paramount to Drop HD DVD?
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."
It's not over until Netcraft confirms it!
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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.
Paramount had denied this allegation. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=178864
Paramount announces that HD-DVD is where it's at. Paramount CEO gives himself a big raise and pat on the back for his intelligence and insight.
Dateline Jan 2008 -
Paramount announces that Blu-Ray is where it's at. Paramount CEO gives himself a big raise and pat on the back for his intelligence and insight.
That's one of the weirdest clauses I've ever heard of... I wonder how truly useful it is, and if Universal really has it as well.
And I'm wondering if they -really- care. Most of their movie sales are going to still be DVD anyhow. And the exclusive contract won't be in effect forever, especially if HD-DVD throws in the towel. I think the most harmful thing would be if they were forced to release all their movies on HD-DVD even knowing they won't sell.
IMHO, the format war is far from over, anyhow. HD DVD players are half the price of the Bluray players, and that means a -lot-, especially while the market is just forming. There are -very- few people buying their second high def player. Almost every player sold is to a new household.
And as far as I can tell, they are getting out of their 'exclusive' contract, but that doesn't mean they'll flop the other way. They might just produce discs for both now.
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Warners decision last week to throw its weight behind Blu-ray saw it join Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as backers of the Sony format.
Some big players in the market there.
The Warners move gives Blu-ray about 70 per cent of Hollywood's output, although the format's grip on film content will increase further when Paramount comes aboard.
The words "grip on film content" makes me feel all cornered.
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I'll believe it when Paramount announces it, not the Financial Times...
If Sony wins a format war, does that mean the end times are near? Should I be stocking up on canned goods and water and working on my underground bunker?
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find their privates are on the Internet.
Thank God this war is pretty much over. Now people can stop sitting on the fences and begin actively investing in Blu-ray. Now we don't have to worry so much about "exclusives" anymore.
I sort of feel sorry for HD-DVD supports. If they're looking to blame someone for this though, they should really point fingers at Microsoft. If they had had the foresight (or even just the balls) to put HD-DVD in to the Xbox 360, the article would be the other away around.
And before anyone brings up digital downloads, I do stand by my opinion that we are still a good five or more years away from that. Much of the world is limited to 1MB or 2MB broadband at most; some are still on dial up! And even those with 8MB offerings still have caps in place (British Telecom, I'm looking at you). DDs are not going to happen until we have better bandwidth, lower contention ratios and guaranteed throughput.
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Well, This was almost clear from the start... as with VHS back in 80s... porn studios go mostly BlueRay then HD-DVD... One example is Vivid Entertainment that decided to publicly back Blu-Ray. :)
Finally!
I always suspected Blu Ray would win (partly because I wanted it to win, partly because of the PS3), but it took far longer than I thought it would. For the most part when corporations compete for the consumers business, the consumers win because they get a better product. In the case of the Next-Gen DVD format, neither the corporations nor the consumers won (or maybe they both won but it was a phyrric (sp?) victory). The products a few years ago are barely any different than what they are now (albeit significantly cheaper), so all that resulted in this conflict was consumer confusion and lost sales from people waiting out on a "winner".
I must say though I'm glad that Blu Ray won given that the only end user noticeable difference is storage and price, and Blu Ray win's on storage space, and will eventually get equal in price.
Looks like Sony wins this one.
I guess it's about time they won one of these format wars after the failures of their memory sticks, mini disks, DAT, etc.
Looks like Sony wins this one.
:)
A more positive way to view it is that Microsoft lost!
Besides, as others have pointed out, lots of companies were behind Bluray, not just Sony.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I don't think the death of HD-DVD (even if it happened) would be a victory for Blu-Ray. All those pissed-off HD-DVD customers, the general ``HD video is a good way to get ripped off'' buzz, in a tightening economy, spells trouble. DCC was `beaten' by MiniDisc, but in the end it was a pyhric victory.
I wonder if -- and indeed expect that -- the victory will prove Pyrrhic.
Gates famously said this would be the last format far. I think that it will prove to be the last plus one. Most people are going to be uninterested in buying video in a locked format; unless blu-rays allow you to play your videos on a generic DVD player, rip your video into your computer, play your video on your PSP, iPod, iPhone, or whatever, not enough people will want them to generate economies of scale.
I suspect that 1080 will turn out to be a mere stepping stone to arbitarily large screen resolutions. DVD, VHS, etc. all targeted an otherwise very stable market of equipment: NTSC televisions and stereo (or even mono) audio. The old CE companies have tried to create a new ecology (HD TV + Surround sound) but the real ecology is much more complex and diverse (PCs, laptops, cellphones, iPods, and stuff we haven't even dreamed of yet) and it's not going to stay even vaguely stable for long enough for a deeply flawed and mistargeted technology to gain traction.
I can never keep up..
bork bork bork!
Indeed. The visual improvements in DVD compared to VHS were just a bonus. I upgraded because VHS was slow, hard to use, and had a short life. DVDs were fast, easy to use and 'the next big thing'.
I don't really think people see (or even understand properly) the aspects of these new formats: bigger capacity and 'better quality' (really, is there much of a difference?).
Quite surprising that Sony won for once, though. *cough*minidisc*cough*
ilovegeorgebush
Sorry HD-DVD is dieing because of back room politics and its not Microsoft. Really, half the time we are claiming they are a dino and dieing off and the next time they are a world power behind the scenes, about the only thing not pinned on them is 9/11.
This is about Hollywood studios lining up with a product more friendly with what they want.
I went with HD-DVD initially because of price. That and the fact ALL movies start immediately without bunches of lead in crap - something that disney loves.
I will get a BluRay once the price reaches HD-DVD player price points. Fortunately there aren't enough movies restricted to one player or the other. Do I think my "investment" in HD-DVD is wasted? No, because they aren't going to stop playing. Besides calling it an "investment" is just a lame way to justify what you spend on something that is essentially frivolous.
Grats to Sony on the win, too bad for the consumer as I while both have overpriced movies the BluRay players are not competitive. If anything it may slow down real High Definition roll outs.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
a less positive way to view it is that HD-DVD is easier to copy than blu-ray.
looks like the chances of getting a next gen dvd player for linux are out the window.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
They denied it, pure and simple. Just because someone can do something doesn't mean they're going to. How about instead of ignoring their denial, you take it for face value until, you know, they actually do it. Until then, the rest of the world will be waiting for sub $100 Blu-Ray players before we even think about jumping on this train.
Over Xmas, I would hear people in electronics stores using the term Blu-ray. I think it is a name with a better cachet to it and believe this has had some effect on its success. The buying public often will pay more for a "better" name so they can say "I have a Blu-ray player." Sometimes the technology or other features will take second place to the name. Remember most of the folks buying these things are not literate /. readers.
Voters, um, I mean buyers, seem to be moved by that message of hope! Obama, um, I mean Blu-Ray, seems to be surging unexpectedly ahead! Change is in the air! The big mony gang is frustrated -- they've been causing change for 25 or more years -- why aren't more people listening? Iowa was a shock; Blu-Ray is 10 points ahead in the latest NH polls; south Carolina won't save HD-DVD; they've gotta re-group and start pointing out Blu-Ray's flaws from now until Super Tuesday!
Only thing I can't figure out is where is Ron Paul in all this? I think he represents 3D holographic TV. It's the darling of the techno-cognoscenti, but nobody really expects it to see the light of day.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Get educated.
Firstly, the difference between the two is completely irrelevant for movies (which is what we're talking about). I want 1080/24p, not the 1080/60p that the kids are giggling over.
Secondly, HD-DVD is the same 1080p as Blu-ray. Perhaps you mean specific players? There are 1080i and 1080p players for both formats.
Why does everyone assume there is going to be a winner? If you look at the history of previous format wars, you can see that most of the time no one wins. For a recent example look at CD/DVD +/-R formats. We are stuck with somewhat more expensive players because of that stalemate. Although they are so cheap at this point that no one cares except for the manufacturers perhaps. OTOH, some formats obviously lost like DVD-RAM. Of course this is a little different because it is the studios that get to decide.
If in fact blu-ray does end up the 'winner', is there anyone else here who attributes this more to the early success of hackers and the AnyDVD devs at HD-DVD ripping? For all we know blu-ray is in fact unhackable, with that ability to change the DRM whenever they want.
Blu-ray supports region encoding. Don't tell me the studios don't love that annoying ability. Blu-ray discs have a thinner protective layer, so that a scratch can more easily result in an unplayable disc and hence a resale of the same disc multiple times, especially since blu-rays are so much harder to backup. And the much greater data density is also of great value from a copy protection and distribution POV. Hard drive storage of ripped movies becomes much more expensive. Internet downloads are even more prohibitive in terms of both bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited high bandwidth connections) and time (not everyone has the patience to wait 3-6 weeks to download a movie they want to see). It has always been obvious that from the studio POV manufacturing cost savings was the only advantage of HD-DVD. In every other way, blu-ray was a win-win for them.
So from the POV of anyone who would like to be able to backup their HiDef movie collection to something that is not so vulnerable to scratches, this is bad news. Of course from a pure videophile perspective this would be good news. More space should equal higher bitrates. Although in practice we may see the studios don't give a rats arse about higher bitrate transfers. After all, superbit DVDs never really took off even though they clearly had superior picture quality.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
There's always NetFlix. Personally, I watch individual movies so infrequently that it doesn't make sense for me to actually buy them. I don't mean that I don't watch movies. Just that, if I've seen a particular movie, I probably won't feel like watching it again for several years.
Should have known HD DVD would be the loser as soon as they released "Serenity" on it. That show can't buy a break.
People that slashdot readers know aren't a good model of the population at large. I'd be prepared to bet that of my wife's friends, less than 10% of them know there is a format war at all. The main decision they're involved in is ``keep the VCR vs Buy a DVD recorder vs Buy a hard-disk recorder'' for timeshifting. In my guise a technology consultant to a large pool of social acquaintances, not one person has mentioned HD. And over lunch in a technology company where I work, the general view is ``maybe at some point, but who cares?''. Note this is England, where a TV over 26" is the mark of he working classes.
Sad. I'm still using my DVDA player.
The thing is that since the run up to Christmas started, right up to this Warner switch announcement, the weekly ratio of Blu to HD-DVD sales has been static at around 61:39, despite individual big titles on both formats and a non-stop series of Buy 1 Get 1 Free offers on Amazon.com and in stores for Blu.
Far better for HD-DVD than the 2:1 to 3:1 we were seeing during most of the summer, and a hell of a lot better than the 8:1 or more that some Blu fanboys were suggesting we'd see by Christmas six months ago.
No, what really seems to have caused the announcement of the switch isn't the ratios at all, but that the raw numbers, and certainly raw profit numbers were far worse than expected. Loads of people sitting out the battle because they didn't want to back the loser, and loads of loss-leading promotion being run on both sides to ensure it wasn't them.
Warner want one side, any side to win, so the fence-sitters might dive in. They just jumped the way they thought might make the most difference.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
HD DVD can offer unencrypted content, and the mandatory managed copy system means even encrypted content can be stored in a central library, format shifted, and even streamed, if you're willing to use consumer tools to do so.
Blu-ray also has a number of downsides over both HD DVD and DVD, most notably that the BD+ system requires regular firmware updates, and that these firmware updates will be needed for the next year or two anyway because the Blu-ray spec, unlike HD DVD, still hasn't been finished.
And that pretty much guarantees that regardless of whether HD DVD dies or not, Blu-ray never, ever*, will displace DVD. A only marginal improvement in image and sound quality in return for a system unusable to a large portion of the population who neither have the skills nor resources to ensure their players are connected to the Internet.
* Well, ok, it might if they fix the bloody thing. But, at least as currently built, Blu-ray objectively is worse than the technology it supposedly obsoletes. If the Blu-ray consortium freeze the spec within the next six months and remove BD+ from it, then it might displace DVD. Operative word "might", the more expensive standard has to have real, discernible and compelling, advantages over the cheaper, incumbent, standard if it's going to get anywhere, and I'm just not seeing them. HD DVD did.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Every negative HD-DVD story on Slashdot is plastered with Blu-Ray ads. Heh.
Well, I bought one of the HD-DVD players at Christmas time and was quite happy with it...for about a week, when WB cut the legs out from under the format. The only actual title I've bought so far was a WB title. Heck, I took their statements about continuing neutrality to be honesty.
I figured it'd turn out that way, but thought the worse-but-final-and-cheaper format might pull one out. I guessed wrong, but at least I got a good upscaling DVD player out of the deal, and I think I'll go ahead and grab some titles before they disappear.
And as far as Blu-Ray goes, I'll wait until there's a non-sucky entry-level player that doesn't cost more than double my 3rd-gen HD-DVD player. I mean, really, a stand-alone player that sucks ass and costs as much as an entry-level PS3, which also plays Blu-Ray and comes with 5 free movies? What kind of moron is going to buy into that right now? I guess the same kind of suckers who buy brand-new computer tech as soon as it comes out.
The way I look at it, these studios just set HD movies BACK a year, and in that time, people won't be buying as many DVDs either, since the studios will take the attitude, "Just buy the Blu-Ray titles, morons!" before long. So have fun losing that revenue stream, guys.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
and Java also won as every Bluray player will contain a JVM. Thus, bluray will damage the brains of the CS students.
SCO claims BluRay using proprietary SCO technology and is pursuing a cease and desist order against Sony and other companies listed here.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Blu-Ray players will play your old DVDs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know if you could call DAT a failure... Mini disk and memory sticks, maybe, but DAT was/is pretty popular in the recording industry.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
1) Blu-Ray movies don't cost $25-30, unless we're not using US dollars here. They cost more like $20-$25, I rarely see Blu-Ray titles for >$25.
2) So they're encrypted. Whoop-de-fuckin' doo. So are DVDs, I hope that you have just as much moral objection to them, and refuse to use them.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Sure, just like Warner was denying their format exclusivity right up until the day they were not.
If there is a clause, what makes you think it's not needed? HD-DVD sales have tanked on Amazon, and there are also rumors of some retailers dropping HD-DVD altogether. If that happens, I would say Paramount would consider it nessecary to invoke the clause.
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Mem sticks is a failure. MD is actually a huge success in Asia. 3.5" and CD were the other Sony victories.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Given they both use the same encoding, really, I seriously doubt that you've noticed any quality improvement Blu-ray has over HD-DVD watching the same movie on the same screen. No serious commentator is suggesting either format has an edge with quality. And right now, anyone who doesn't have a very, very, large TV, that does 1080 and has a really good contrast ratio is not going to notice a significant advantage either format has over DVD. It's not that there's no difference, I was pretty excited seeing the opening scene of "Bladerunner" on HD DVD, and there are a few panoramic shots in The Bourne Ultimatum that stand out too; but for most of most movies, there's no significant improvement. It's a scene here and there that looks slightly better but you'd never have even noticed a lack of quality on DVD.
Wow, there's a technical advantage right there! I'm going to create the SuperAwesomeHD format, they'll have to switch to it with a name like that!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Given Microsoft's involvement, the fear is that any green identifier used would eventually turn red, at which point you would have to ship your HD DVD back to the factory for service.
Despite the fact that Tosh has been dumping players at somewhere around 1/2 of production price, the uptake of HD DVD has been pretty dismal. In fact, uptake of HDM in general has been dismal. This is the problem Warner was facing. They, and only they, had the power to put an end to a format war that kept the consumer on the fence. To do so they only had one move open to them. They made it.
There is no reason to think Warner was paid off in the way Paramount was, but it is not unreasonable to assume they got some good disk-printing incentives. Warner executives denies Warner was paid, and with Sarbanes-Oxley, it is reasonable to assume they are speaking the truth about that. I find it odd that the HD DVD fanboys are so adamant that Warner is unable to make rational business decisions. As with most nutcase theories, there has to be a conspiracy somewhere.
Oh, and BTW, in December, the sales of stand alone Blu-Ray players was higher than that of HD DVD players, despite the fact that they are priced twice or more of HD DVD. So, what can we say? Even when you give away HD DVD players, the general public say shrug, I don't care. That hurts everybody, and Warner needed to do something about that.
Now, now, let's not just make up numbers willy nilly or distort pretty ancient numbers. A good portion of PS3 players by now was sold with a Blu-Ray movie, the consumer isn't that stupid.
And that is your prerogative. I prefer to watch HD movies. You apparently want to watch SD movies rather than going with a format that your religion says you should not use. Good for you.
Since the time this news was in the firehose till now... we are now discussing green-ray vs MegaHD-DVD. The old war is over.
I know this was a joke, but in many ways you aren't far from the truth:
- Holographic Storage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage
- Tapestry Media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry_Media
- Enhanced Versatile Disc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Versatile_Disc
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You make absolutely no sense. Let's assume Warner got paid. There is no proof and no rumors of any substance to back that up, but let's run with it. Paramount got paid to do HD-DVD, and that is well known. So how does it make it any different?
According to vgchartz.com, the PS3 has only sold slightly under 9 million units. Let's pretend that is correct, and also that you're made up number of 1/5 is also correct. That still puts people who know they have a Bluray player at about double your number of 1 million HD-DVD player buyers. But we haven't counted people who bought stand alone Bluray players.
You're last paragraph is where you lose me. So you are in the HD-DVD camp. That's fine. But then you go on to say you refuse to go Bluray until fair use is supported. Where is fair use supported in HD-DVD. Just because the DRM has been cracked, doesn't mean it's supported. So OK, you say you'll stick with DVD. Again, there is still DRM and breaking it is not supported. But how are you going to stick with DVDs when you are in the HD-DVD camp?
There are two givens here: prices will come down (just like DVDs did) and DRM will be cracked (just like it always is).
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"Blu-ray supports region encoding."
HD-DVD was getting it too.
"Don't tell me the studios don't love that annoying ability."
Oh they do and it pisses me off no end, no argument there.
"Don't tell me the studios don't love that annoying ability."
I believe they're also made of a far more scratch resistant material.
"And the much greater data density is also of great value from a copy protection and distribution POV. Hard drive storage of ripped movies becomes much more expensive"
Wait, wait, am I reading this right - more capacity is a BAD thing?
Internet downloads are even more prohibitive in terms of both bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited high bandwidth connections) and time (not everyone has the patience to wait 3-6 weeks to download a movie they want to see).
Newsflash for ya - the storage format isn't gonna matter a rats arse (to borrow your phrase) when it comes to net downloads, which will continue to be downsampled and compressed as necessary. It doesn't matter whether HD-DVD or BluRay becomes the defacto standard, it's utterly immaterial to downloads.
"More space should equal higher bitrates."
And with BluRay it does.
Now, the DRM is an issue I'll agree with you on, it sucks big time. But the rest of your post wasn't much help.