Final Blow Struck in Hi-Def Format War?

Latest update from TheDigitalBits.com...

According to the Financial Times of London, Paramount is on the verge of not only supporting Blu-Ray again, but becoming Blu-Ray EXCLUSIVE. If true, Warner Brothers' recent announcement is the beginning of an avalanche. Read about it here. We may be seeing Star Trek on Blu-Ray sooner than I thought.

Also, the Bits confirms that New Line is going Blu-Ray exclusive; Pan's Labyrinth is their last HD-DVD title.

 

There were rumors that up to 30% of M$'s speech at CES would be about HD-DVD. Man, what a kick in the nutz! I am glad I backed the winning side.

I highly doubt announcing an Ultimate Xbox would've helped very much. It's not like Xbox owners would go out and buy a second one, even if the typical Red Ring Of Death showed up. They would just send it back for the warranty, that was recently extended.

 

I know that Microsoft didn't put an HD player in the 360 for price reasons, and if it had been that expensive I probably wouldn't have gotten one.

Still, though, I feel bad for my old room mate, who's a Microsoft fanboy. He got the HD-DVD player for the 360, and already has a quite-sizeable HD-DVD collection.

It's both funny and sad to think of all the money he's probably wasted.

 

It isn't as though his HD player or HDDVDs are suddenly going to stop working, so it isn't all wasted money.

 

Yep. It's going to probably be awhile until Paramount and Universal switch to Blu-ray or at least go dual-format. And on top of that, it'll take time to get some of the current HD-DVD exclusives to start popping up on Blu-ray.

I've been "purple" so far. Originally, I backed Blu-ray, but wanted to get a number of Universal titles and some WB titles, like Batman Begins, that weren't available on Blu-ray yet. The quicker HD-DVD dies, the sooner I can pick up a backup player for my movies. Not sure how soon or if I'll replace the HD-DVD titles.

 

I just read a few rumors off of Paladin's link and links from that link that Mac is possibly going to be announcing that Blu-Ray drives will become a standard feature in their desktop and possibly iMac computers. That would certainly end this thing.

 

Actually, the word is Paramount will release the Blu-Ray titles they had in the works when they went HD-DVD exclusive last August. Titles could wind up in the stores very quickly.

And it's a pretty reliable report that Paramount is embracing Blu-Ray again. Word is that Universal is having talks with the Blu-Ray group also.

I'm sure it would make a whole lot of sense for the movies already mastered in HD to be moved to Blu-Ray first.

 

Not really, a shock, Paramount might be dropping support for HD-DVD. Can't imagine it'll take too long for Universal to at least go dual format if Paramount uses an escape clause.

EDIT - Posted at about the same time as Paladin.

Hopefully soon. Thinking about it, it won't be hard to just ditch my HD-DVD collection. I only have about 10 titles right now. Of course, with the BOGO sales at Amazon.com, I have a whopping 6 Blu-ray titles. Plus the 5 freebies if they ever come.

 

Universal would be crazy not to go Blu, people will not buy separate players for just one or 2 studios, Paramount realizes that and is bailing out. If they want to sell High-Def disks then it is time to switch.

 

I'm not sure that would end it. I think the above combined with companies such as HP/Compaq, Dell, IBM and etc. announcing something similar would be more along the lines of your conclusion. I'm not sure that Mac has enough of a market share though to have that type of impact.

 

Although a bunch of trekkies who have purchased season 1 of Star Trek in HD will be ticked.

 

As bad as I want that, even if it were in Blu right now, I think they have priced it too high. I would pay $100, but I won't pay $150 for it.

Is it true that Next Gen and DS9 can never be put into HD because they were shot on Video Tape instead of film? That would suck royally IMO.

 

Judging from the "look" of the series, I'm pretty sure that the actors were shot on film, but the effects (for the first few seasons, at least) were done on video. It always looked very "jarring' to me when they'd cut from a scene with actors to a miniature shot or a shot with some other kind of special effect in it. They didn't look all that great twenty years ago and they really look bad now. Those early TNG miniature shots from the first season or two don't even look good when compared to effects shots from later in the series.

DS9 always looked good to me, with no dropoff in quality between the live action footage and the effects/miniature shots.

If the scenes with the actors were shot on film, I suppose they could always redo the effects shots with modern CGI. I personally don't think DS9 needs it, but TNG could certainly use the help.

 

It makes me sad. TNG was on the air when I was an "adult". Now there are people who weren't even born when "Encounter at Farpoint" aired that are almost old enough to get into bars.

 

I can't even imagine the price tag they would put on them. $200 a season? They would probably never sell enough at that price to make it profitable

 

I would agree that earlier seasons of TNG would need to help with the fx. DS9, I think would be able to hold its own. By that time, the folks doing the fx work were more proficient and experienced in doing what the work I think.

 

The only thing I'd wanna see done with the DS9 FX, really, is to clear out the heavy usage of stock footage later on in the series, especially in the final episode.

 

Well it certainly looks like HD-DVD is dead.

 

If you're interested in HD-DVDs of 'Pan's Labyrinth,' 'Hairspray,' 'Rush Hour 3,' or any other title put out by New Line, you should buy them soon.

New Line Announce Immediate Cancellation of All HD-DVD Titles.

 

Anyone else think that Paramount and Universal are probably already converting some assembly lines over to Blu-Ray to stock up on movies for their big announcement of going Blu?

 

^ Not sure about any shifting changes on the lower rungs of the ladder but here is what is happening in the corporate landscape according to Blu-ray.com insiders. While they are generally reliable but still take it with a grain of salt.

Paramount does have an "out clause" related to the Warner deal however it is not what you think it is. Allegedly Paramount's deal with Toshiba was based on the condition that some studio will switch to HD-DVD exclusive by Q1 2008 however the exact opposite has happened so the original agreement is in effect null. Paramount can get out of this immediately or wait and take more of the 50 million dollar pro-rated payment they received from Toshiba. I imagine Dreamworks (own by Paramount) would be even more hesitant to jump ship immediately since they took 100 million.

 

With these recent announcements I'm sure that Paramount and Universal will find ways out of their contracts as well, or they have built into them ways out. As for the conversion from HD DVD to blu ray, that will be interesting to see how they accomplish that aspect of things. Because there are quite a few more HD DVD duplication facilities than there are blu ray. If I recall correctly, I believe all of blu rays facilities are located through out CA and are roughly half of what HD DVD has. Plus it takes longer to manufacture a blu ray disc than it does an HD DVD.

 

How long do they have to stay exclusive to get the full amount? If it's a year then it is probably worth it to stay, if it's 5 years, it's probably not. They know as soon as they go Blu and release the stuff that has been HD-DVD exclusive that it will sell just fine so why rush into it. If they can get all their money and then switch and make just about as much money off Blu sales as they would if they made the switch right now then there is clearly no rush.

 

I thought Dreamworks was owned by Speilberg, Katzenburgh and one other person whose name I can't remember.

 

Paramount's deal was only for 18 months. They don't have a lot longer before they switch even if they don't use a clause of that sort. I think Universal's contract ends around the same time.

 

Both deals were for 18 months. 5 months have already elapsed. Paramount is probably doing some number crunching right now. Since no one besides the corporate guys are privy to the detail terms of deal concerning the payment so we can conclude anything.

They sold it to Viacom just recently. I don't remember the date.

 

HD-DVD player owners are bailing out, at least in Dallas. I just was searching craigslist for HD TV's to try and pick one up cheap for my bedroom and noticed that suddenly there are quite a few ads for HD-DVD players for $100-250. I looked in December and the best I could find was about 250, and there was only one of them. In the last few days several more have popped on there.

Looks like these guys are trying to get out while they still can and still get a little bit of that money back to put towards Blu-Ray.

 

The thinking is that no one's going to make any official announcements until after January. They don't want a tidal wave of Christmas returns...

 

Makes sense to me.

 

I stopped off at my local Fry's this afternoon. In the past they have had separate racks for their HD DVD and Blu Ray dvd's. One side of the racks were for HD the opposite side for Blu Ray. Well I popped in there today, I noticed that there were only HD DVD's on the rack. At first I was thinking, WTF... did they run out of their entire stock of Blu Ray's? Well, I asked one of the employees where the Blu Ray dvd's were. Fry's had relocated to them to an entire aisle for them.