Paramount to Drop Blu-Ray for HD-DVD

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."

Re:Yeah, right.

[cyphercell]

I think the deals are being made all over the place, funny though when you look at it, it's still essentially a stalemate. I'm backing blu-ray, odds are you back hd-dvd.

Microsoft 'bribed' the two into dropping Blueray

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa141.html# dp [thedigitalbits.com]

Money Talks

[JackSpratts]

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

- js.

http://www.tvpredictions.com/bluraypay082007.htm [tvpredictions.com]

Re:What's the Motive?

[neo8750]

I have to ask myself, what's the motive a studio would have with going toward HD DVD technology vs. Blu-Ray?

Well for one they figure that there is a large mass of people with the hd-dvd player compared to the people with blue-ray players. also even the summary of the article answered your question with "He added the lower price for the Toshiba devices will appeal to the family market."

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[tgd]

Actually, yeah. I know a lot of people (myself included) who have not bought a new DVD in a year -- I'm not going to rebuy my collection, and its silly at this point to buy them in SD.

The format war needs to end, either through surrender (unlikely) or through dual-format players becoming available.

Re:Yeah, right.

[Technician]

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

Doubly suspicious since the family friendly Blockbuster Rental stores simply will be stocking mostly Blu-Ray.

"Paramount's move comes weeks after Blockbuster, the DVD rental chain, said it would stock more Blu-ray discs to cope with rising consumer demand."

From the article here;
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e8569e16-4f61-11dc-b485- 0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b 5df10621.html [ft.com]

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[king-manic]

I've noticed at all the rip you off outlets (Visions) HD-DVD movies tend to be more expensive then blurays ones for exactly the same movies. I wonder why? 300 was $29.95 cnd for blue ray but $39.95 for HD-DVD at visions electronics.

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[king-manic]

Bluray and HD-DVD have virtually identical technologies in almost all ways except data density and software. The scratch proof coating is actually pretty scratch proof on both. The only difference is in HD DVD it's optional. So really cheap HD-DVD's will be as bad as really cheap DVD's while Blu-ray has to be coated if they want to stamp it bluray.

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[jridley]

1080p is nowhere NEAR film grain quality. That's still only in the 2 megapixel range. When you start seeing video where each frame is in the 10-20 megapixel range, then you might be talkin'.

I held off on LaserDisc way before the DVD even began development, because I was certain that within a few years someone would come out with a format that put LaserDisc quality on something the size of a CD. That was a good decision. However, I'm actually pretty happy with DVD. Yeah, I can see artifacts on my 100" projector, but I don't have any problems ignoring them and just watching the movie.

I'll get an HD player at some point but it won't bother me in the least if it's 5 or 10 years from now. I probably won't bother until I can buy an HD-R drive for my computer for $50.

This is big as Paramount is the biggest studio

[llZENll]

Paramount is the biggest studio of 2007 with 18% market share.

January 1-August 19, 2007
Overall Gross: $6.585 billion
Rank Distributor Market
Share Total
Gross* Movies
Tracked 2007
Movies**
1 Paramount 18.1% $1,189.5 15 11
2 Warner Bros. 14.8% $974.8 23 13
3 Buena Vista 14.1% $930.6 16 8
4 Sony / Columbia 14.0% $924.6 19 16
5 Universal 11.3% $745.0 13 11
6 20th Century Fox 10.9% $719.9 17 9

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/ [boxofficemojo.com]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[willy_me]

But HD-DVD is only 15Gigs per side so there is an advantage to the 25Gig/side Blu-Ray discs.

Re:Does anyone even care at this point?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Wrong. People keep saying this, but 35mm motion picture is nowhere near 20 megapixels when you're talking about the third or fourth generation prints that go to theathers.

Many, many films today use digital color correction or digital effects at 2k (2048x1080p) resolution. Major films, including Mann's Collateral and Miami Vice, Episode III, and others are 'filmed' digitally at 2k resolution with great success.

Go see a digital cinema. It is shockingly better - sharper, no gate jitter, and no noise. 2K is more than adequete.

Curse of the Combo Disc

[SuperKendall]

I've noticed at all the rip you off outlets (Visions) HD-DVD movies tend to be more expensive then blurays ones for exactly the same movies. I wonder why?

Because HD-DVD ships you combo discs that play in both normal DVD players and HD-DVD players - and you get to pay extra for the priviledge.

As a bonus, sometimes the layers seperate and destroy the disc 300 had that issue. It's not common though, just like the Blu-Ray layer seperation issue was in small batches. Still, paying extra for discs where you only want the HD content is really annoying.

what does Microsoft "BoB" have to do with this

[Locutus]

As soon as I read the headline, I was reminded of the DreamWorks clan( Geffen, Katzenberg, and Spielberg ) all wearing Microsoft "BoB" hats back when Microsoft reinvented the user interface of the future. It was a short time after that when we all saw Bill Gates join in the mug shots as they all announced the DreamWorks Interactive partnership( Microsoft and DreamWorks ).

So, what does Microsoft "BoB" have to do with this? Is there any wonder why Katzenberg is committing to back the HD DVD format of a very wealthy financial partner? HD-DVD is as much Microsofts format as it is Toshiba's IMO.

LoB

Re:What are the odds?

[docdude316]

Blu-Ray has Pirates 3, Spiderman 3, Harry Potter, 300, Ratatouille, Simpsons, The Bourne Ultimatum, All 4 Die Hard movies, Knocked Up, Oceans 13, Fantastic Four 2, Surf's Up (never underestimate DVD sales on a kid's movie like this), Rush Hour 3, etc. I think you need to get your facts straight. Lets go through that list of movies: 1. Pirates 3 - Disney so it is Blu-Ray exclusive 2. Spiderman 3 - Sony so it is Blu-Ray exclusive 3. Harry Potter - WB format neutral. In fact many of us are already enjoying the 4th Harry Potter movie on HD DVD 4. 300 - WB format neutral but with a better feature set on the HD DVD 5. Ratatouille - Disney so it is Blu-Ray exclusive 6. Simpsons - Fox so it is Blu-Ray exclusive 7. The Bourne Ultimatum - Universal so it is HD DVD exclusive 8. Die Hard - Fox so it is Blu-Ray exclusive 9. Knocked Up - Universal so it is HD DVD exclusive 10. Oceans 13 - WB so it is format neutral 11. Fantastic Four- I'm not sure on this one. It might be Blu-Ray exclusive since it is a Fox movie, but the first one was as well and it is available for import on HD DVD, so I'm going to guess this movie will be format neutral 12. Surf's Up - Sony so it's Blu-Ray exclusive 13. Rush Hour 3 - WB so it is format neutral As you can see less than half of the movies you listed are exclusive to Blu-Ray. I say the race is pretty even now.

Re:The End of this Format War?

[Fallen Kell]

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/ [hdtvmagazine.com] uses the PS3 as their "reference" player for BluRay. So does the fact that http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/ [soundandvisionmag.com] used it as well.

Not Nintendo

[McFadden]

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.

Nowhere near 20MP, not even 10. Not even 2.

[daBass]

Most hollywood films you would see now in the cinema were edited using Digital_intermediates [wikipedia.org]; film scanned at either 2K or (probably more common now) 4K and then recorded back to film. That is 4000 pixels wide, not 4000 lines. So at the now popular 1:2.35 aspect ratio, that is less than 7MP.

Plus when projected, the actual resolution of film as seen off the silver screen is very, very low. This is simply because running at 24 fps through a projector and being stopped for a brief moment it is on screen, the frame is never completely flat or motionless. Plus the frame is tiny and the much larger magnification needed compared to a digital projector's CCD/whatever brings with it a lot of unsharpness due to lens flaws. Not to mention the positive film you see in the theater is a 3rd or 4th generation copy from the original negative.

This is why even 2K digital scans in the theater are a lot sharper than any project 35mm/24fps film will ever be. Not to mention far less black time in between frames.

Back to HD-DVD:

If you have a computer or laptop capable of playing it back and an HDTV with HDMI or DVI input (or a converter plug) you should try a downloaded HD rip. (search for "1080p" on any torrent site) I only have a 37" 720p TV with a rather good upscaling HDMI DVD player. But even at just 720p, downloaded 4 mb/sec x264 movies ripped from BR/HDVD played back on this TV using DVI from my MacBook Pro look a lot better than any upscaled DVDs.

I also can't wait for Dolby TrueHD audio from the actual discs!

That said, a far cheaper upgrade would have been h.264 on the same 9GB disk. No room for TrueHD audio, but any feature film would have fit at a high enough bitrate to put any DVD to shame.

Re:Yeah, right.

[ResidntGeek]

HD-DVD does support mandatory Linear PCM, so no worries there.

Re:Yeah, right.

[WARM3CH]

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...

Re:Yeah, right.

[Bertie]

It is NOT Sony's.

Not exclusively, anyway. There's loads of people making Blu-Ray players. In fact, HD-DVD is far worse from this point of view - the only major backing it's receiving is from Toshiba and Microsoft.

I don't know why people keep perpetuating this. Sure, Sony has a reputation for pushing proprietary formats when everybody else is co-operating, but on this occasion it's the other way round.

Re:Yeah, right.

[JCSoRocks]

'Cause of the blue laser. For a while people were buying up Blu-Ray players, pulling the laser outta there, putting it in a laser pointer and then selling it for $2500 to crazy people. The blue lasers are *spendy*.

Also, it's true that this is a completely different battle than mini-disc. There are more studios making blu-ray movies, Blockbuster is all Blu-Ray and there are more companies making Blu-Ray players / drives. I don't understand how / why HD-DVD is still around... is Microsoft paying these people off? This is nuts. I hate format wars. ugh.

PS - I didn't know about the TrueHD thing on HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, that's a bummer.

The "only" major backing?

[KingSkippus]

I don't know where you heard this, but HD-DVD has many more backers than "only" Toshiba and Microsoft. Here is a short list [wikipedia.org]. Also, keep in mind that HD-DVD is the format supported by the DVD Forum [wikipedia.org], aka the DVD consortium, the builders and maintainers of the original DVD format, which means that every company that backs DVDs is indirectly backing HD-DVD, whether they want to or not.

And while it's true that a common misconception is that Sony "owns" Blu-ray, it's also true that Sony is THE major backer and has the most at stake in Blu-ray winning the format war. The movie studios are still on the fence. Even the studios that released Blu-ray versions of movies have only released minor movies and old movies, and could switch at the drop of a hat at any time. Ditto Blockbuster video. If Blu-ray suddenly and dramatically lost the format war to HD-DVD, they wouldn't be impacted very much. (They've planned it that way, incidentally.) However, Sony sold its soul in including the Blu-ray drive in its PS3, and if the format fails, they'll be FUBAR.

Of course, I personally don't think that Blu-ray or HD-DVD will win the format war. The next major format is not media at all; it's network delivery of content. Ten years from now, the concept of having to put a disc into a drive to watch a movie will seem quaint.