Slashdot Log In
Paramount to Drop HD DVD?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jan 08, 2008 09:58 AM
from the this-might-be-it-folks dept.
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."
Related Stories
[+]
Games: Warner Backs Blu-Ray. End Times For HD-DVD? 705 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports: In addition to Apple, Warner Brothers is now going to throw its weight behind the Blu-ray format for high-definition disks. Warner has been the only major studio to publish its movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Today, the studio announced that from now on, it would only issue movies in Blu-ray.
Richard Greenfield, the media analyst with Pali Research, wrote that this marks the end of the format wars: "We expect HD DVD to 'die' a quick death.""
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
already denied by paramount (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aQMGgh2LV_bU&refer=japan [bloomberg.com]
There's only a clausule that it is permitted for Paramount to drop hd-dvd if they think it's needed.
Re:already denied by paramount (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a blitz of these "the war is over, HD DVD is doomed" stories last couple of days, and sites post them very uncritically. Same with political "assassinations" online, doesn't matter how many times they are refuted, the lies live on and will probably enter the history books one day.
Re:already denied by paramount (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't sound like a denial at all. That just sounds like they haven't announced any changes yet, so of course it's their "current plan". We already knew that it was their "current plan".
Paramount Denies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Paramount Denies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paramount Denies (Score:5, Interesting)
Moral of the story: Never believe anything you read or hear, especially when it's said in corporate circles.
Not holding my breath (Score:5, Insightful)
If Sony Wins a Format War . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If Sony Wins a Format War . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If Sony Wins a Format War . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Winner is the Consumer (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Winner is the Consumer (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Winner is the Consumer (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Microsoft is not to blame. Assuming HD DVD is dead (and the lead story here is false, but it does feel right now like it's a matter of time), then I blame a number of groups. Microsoft shouldn't have put HD DVD in to the X-Box 360, it would have hurt X-Box 360 owners just as Blu-ray did Playstation 3 buyers. I'm not going to criticize them for doing the right thing.
Microsoft's support for HD went beyond what was right for Microsoft. They ruined Vista in part by implementing a viable DRM and "secure path" systems to make it easier for Windows based systems to play AACS based content. This delayed Vista, reduced its compatibility with previous versions of Windows, and made the operating system less friendly to end users.
And to their credit, they pushed for features of the HD DVD standard that, had (or if...) HD DVD taken off, would have been net gains for consumers, notably the mandatory managed copy system that would have provided some means for format and space shifting of access controlled content. Had/if HD DVD taken off, we'd see HD DVD players that can store entire libraries of movies, and stream them around the house. You'd be able to store HD DVD movies on your laptop computers instead of carrying the discs around with you. You'd be able to condense movies into forms storeable on compatible portable video players.
What's happened is that the DVD Forum didn't push hard enough. Before Christmas, I saw huge amounts of advertising for Blu-ray and nothing for HD DVD. I saw stores locked up so they only sold and marketed Blu-ray. HD DVD advertising has concentrated purely on high quality video, the only area where it's identical to Blu-ray in features.
The equipment making supporters of HD DVD didn't push out the equipment fast enough. HD DVD burners are hard to come by. HD DVD jukeboxes and other devices that make use of the managed copy features are non-existent. Toshiba was also pretty close to alone in pushing the format, with most of the other manufacturers making token efforts but skimping entirely on the marketing.
Today if you want HD DVD, you can get a player to do it that has no major advantages over a Blu-ray player except in that it doesn't need constant firmware updates. And as most consumers have never heard of firmware, and aren't aware that Blu-ray isn't finished and that discs sold within the next couple of years will be unplayable on current equipment without updates, consumers have largely gone for the marketing pushed brand.
The DVD Forum would have won if they'd gone either positive or negative on the advantages over Blu-ray. They instead have ignored it. They have a few months to turn this around, and I think it's doubtful they'll be able to do it.
It figures because "Serenity" was HD DVD. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems like HD-DVD is dead (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Seems like HD-DVD is dead (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems like HD-DVD is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like this is a war not worth winning (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Seems like this is a war not worth winning (Score:5, Funny)
You know better than to say "stuff we haven't dreamed of yet". The real winner will be the format that can run a lifelike virtual reality pornography simulation. Last I checked, Blu-Ray doesn't even come with a mechanical dildo (but imagine how quickly your wife would want it if it did).
In all seriousness... there are 5 human senses. Sight and hearing are taken care of. Really good movies can give you the chills or make you cry - so that *partially* handles the sense of touch. More work with that, and then an entertainment platform that can simulate smell are around the corner.
When you can smell Jenna Jameson's perfume as her virtual body climbs over you... that is when the Format War will be over.
:)
Re:Seems like this is a war not worth winning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems like HD-DVD is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Porn studios showed the way. (Score:5, Insightful)
The myth that it was the porn studios who cased VHS to win over Betamax has been pretty thoroughly debunked... besides, even if it was so, this does not mean it must happen again 20 years later -
*People can get porn online easily these days.
*Porn might be one of the few genres that DON'T benefit from high-definition.
Re:May I be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no more price war? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:The impossible happened, hell froze over (Score:5, Interesting)
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.