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Paramount to Drop HD DVD? 470

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."
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Paramount to Drop HD DVD?

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  • Goddammit (Score:3, Funny)

    by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:01AM (#21953154) Homepage
    It's not over until Netcraft confirms it!
  • by Jesus_Corpse ( 190811 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:01AM (#21953160)
    Paramount already denied this:

    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.
    • by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:26AM (#21953474) Homepage Journal
      Paramount already denied this:

      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.

    • by ribuck ( 943217 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:42AM (#21953690)
      Paramount's spokeswoman said "Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format".

      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".
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tbannist ( 230135 )
      ...

      Of course, denying the switch is the correct course of action, whether they're going to switch or not.

      There's no sense in risking your sales by announcing shortly you won't be supporting the formatting you're selling. The rumour that they might should be enough to drive sales up a bit for the people who already have HD DVD players and don't want to switch to BluRay. Meanwhile you can be sure as hell, they're getting ready to go both formats and/or BluRay exclusive if the money works out.

      I.e. the only
    • 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.
  • Paramount Denies (Score:5, Informative)

    by quantumplacet ( 1195335 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:02AM (#21953176)
    Paramount had denied this allegation. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=178864 [computeran...ogames.com]
    • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:13AM (#21953298)
      The statement says "Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format". It's a weak denial and pretty ambiguous. The way it is worded they could easily change their minds tomorrow or even go neutral. I would expect HD DVD studios to be issuing stronger statements than that if they were actually committed to the format.
      • Oh geez. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Viewsonic ( 584922 )
        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.
        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by DrXym ( 126579 )
          They denied it in a weak and ambiguous manner. If Paramount were supporters of HD DVD all the way, why didn't they say as much? Why issue such a limp wristed statement which is open to interpretation. As I said, their statement doesn't preclude going neutral which may as well as be the same as killing support for HD DVD entirely.
      • Re:Paramount Denies (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Durzel ( 137902 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @11:37AM (#21954496) Homepage
        Lest we forget that Warner issued a not-too-dissimilar statement just before they went all-in with the Blu-ray boys.

        Moral of the story: Never believe anything you read or hear, especially when it's said in corporate circles.
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by king-manic ( 409855 )

          Moral of the story: Never believe anything you read or hear, especially when it's said in corporate circles.
          Damn.. school must have been hard for you.
  • 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.
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      Actually, it proibably WAS the smart thing to do, since it likely earned them TWO payoffs, one [gizmodo.com] from HD-DVD last year and probably one from Blu-ray this time around (similar to the one Warner just got) [formatwarcentral.com]
  • 'Get out clause" (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Aladrin ( 926209 )
    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
    • 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-

      Half price for a player that only works with a format most major movie studio's don't support? Actually, it means nothing at all. Half price for a device you can't get new films for is 100% too much money. The way things are going, no film studio will suppoort it soon, I was expecting Warner Brothers would be only the first of many, and here we are with Paramount following.

      Where I l
    • 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.

      Forget second HD player. I and everyone I know are just waiting for the format war to be over before jumping to hi-def at all. I'm hoping Paramount does jump because one format will be chosen once and for all (for the next f

  • by AndGodSed ( 968378 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:05AM (#21953210) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • by gumpish ( 682245 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:08AM (#21953226) Journal
    I'll believe it when Paramount announces it, not the Financial Times...
  • by LMacG ( 118321 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:08AM (#21953228) Journal
    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?
  • by bhunachchicken ( 834243 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:13AM (#21953308) Homepage

    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.

    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      If MS had waited to put an HD-DVD drive in the 360, the damn hardware would have been even MORE buggy than it already is and they would had to delay it and missed their chance to gain a lead on Sony's PS3. Sony would have ended up becoming COMPLETELY dominant (instead of just winning the HD movie format war).
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 )
      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.

      Then the XBox 360 would have been late to market and expensive. I think MS had a lot more staked on the success of the XBox 360 than HD DVD.
    • 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.
      You're neglecting the fact that they likely had the foresight that consumers did not want to pay $600 for a console, which is what the 360 would have cost had an HD-DVD drive been bundled in.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by rasjani ( 97395 )
      On unrelated matter to the whole topic but related to your comment, one of Finland's biggest cable operators Welho is going to start digital downloads (iptv) during first half of the 2008. Their best bandwidth offer so far has been 10MB cable connection but on a consumer fair few months ago they announced that they will start to offer 100MB connections covering their whole network (without any need to modications to existing infrastructure except change of the enduser modem).

      Finland is also one of the first
    • 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
    • by gnuman99 ( 746007 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @11:24AM (#21954284)
      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.
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @12:02PM (#21954858)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zakabog ( 603757 )
        I'm sorry, how has blu-ray hurt PS3 owners? I have a system that can support game discs as large as 50GB, along with a blu-ray disc player AND I can install Linux on it. I've never been happier with a game system before, I think Sony did everything right with the PS3 for those who can afford it. People who can't, will be able to one day when the price drops down so it's not that big a deal. I was expecting this to happen to HD DVD, as soon as I heard that the PS3 would play blu-ray discs it was just obv
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )
      > 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.

      I call BS on this. If MS did this then the xbox would have been 100 dollars more, fanboys would have complained, and they still would have lost the format war. They might even have lost the console war.

      First off, MS is not Sony. They dont own a movie studio and billion dollar movies. MS is always fighting off regulation and is somewhat controlled by the threat of lawsuit
  • 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. :)
    • by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:34AM (#21953590) Homepage Journal
      Porn studios showed the way.

      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.
      • High Def porn is a good thing. If you like what you're looking at then more def is usually good. Hell a real female is infinitely more "hi def" than the TV is they are still generally prefered over porn.

        With that out of the way, I do agree that porn seems to be completely migrating to the digital download world, which makes total sense. While they sell a LOT of porn, there is also a LOT of porn made, and most of the individual discs don't sell really well (despite the profit level being high just because
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          High Def porn is a good thing. If you like what you're looking at then more def is usually good. Hell a real female is infinitely more "hi def" than the TV is they are still generally prefered over porn.

          Yes but real people don't have genitals the size of 42" screens and razor pimples the size of tennis balls...
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by MBGMorden ( 803437 )
            All a matter of perspective and how close you are. Real genitals at 6 inches away are likely more detailed than 42" screen closeup genitals from 6 feet away.
  • by slyn ( 1111419 ) <ozzietheowl@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:16AM (#21953344)
    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.
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @10:36AM (#21953612)
      Sony are DRM-crazed control freaks. This is NOT a victory for consumers. May I remind you which studio was putting rootkits on all their CD's not so long ago? Do you really think they won't use their dominance to try some similar stuff with blu-ray?
    • that the only end user noticeable difference is storage and price

      I would say that storage is not end user noticeable, as both formats have sufficient space for what they do - store hi def movies. That only leaves price, and maybe DRM (arguable I admit), at which Blu Ray loses both.

    • To be honest, I thought Circuit City's Divx lower price would beat out DVD, but I was wrong. Now I have a player that can play both, though very few Divx titles. I waited until that was resolved before buying my first DVD player. It was $99.

      I had been backing HD DVD, again due to it's lower device price. I'm still not buying high def until the price is around $99 for a cheap player. The rental stores still carry only a small amount of titles, and DVD looks good enough on my HDTV. My eye's aren't you
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ProppaT ( 557551 )
      To me this is a major loss for consumers.

      1) Sony likes to fix market prices.

      2) Blue Ray players are a royal pain to program for, where HD-DVD's devopment tools are quite robust and relatively easy to use. This is a loss for DVD collectors such as myself who often buy DVD's just for the bonus features.

      3) Discs will be more expensive to print because BR is not an open standard and royalties will have to be paid to Sony.

      4) DRM, blah blah. Good luck ever being able to rip those movies onto a media server.
    • I was hoping for Blu Ray to win in the beginning but I was also planning on buying a PS3 back then... now I have a 360 and was kinda hoping hd-dvd would fare a little better. That said, I'm just glad it's over or virtually so. We need one machine that can play everything... PS3 games, 360 games, Wii games, Blu Ray discs, HD-DVD discs, regular dvd's, cd's, divx, xvid, mkv, avi, lmnop and whatever else. An all in one super duper special deluxe player for a thousand easy payments of just $19.95. Call now!
  • It seems to me that the media made a mountain out of a molehill with this 'war'. I quite frankly couldn't care less, as I don't intend to upgrade to either format for a long time.
  • It's not over till the fat lady sings. She has sung yet but I hear her warming up in the wings. I think we can call this one at this point. Sony wins. Sad, because I swore that I would never buy another sony product again.

    Oh well I guess I can always get a third party br player. Good thing about this is now we can concentrate on cracking all the br encryption and not be distracted by HD-DVD's. Or is HD-dvd no longer a problem?

  • Supposedly the VHS/Betamax war was decided by the adult video houses rather than the "big" publishers... which way are they going?
    • Thanks to the Internet, they're not nearly as important as they were in the 1980's.

      Granted, I haven't ever been in such a store in my life, but given that High Definition would allow you to see things like blemishes, bruises, and scars from plastic surgery much more easily than before, my guess would be that they'd rather stick to DVD.
  • I got a Blu-ray player free with my TV at Christmas so I'm glad to hear the format appears to be winning. But it seems to me we should be getting our movies over the internet and distributing these little plastic discs is kind of silly.

    • But it seems to me we should be getting our movies over the internet and distributing these little plastic discs is kind of silly.

      It's an issue of bandwidth and storage limitations. Let's say that you want to watch a Blu-ray movie on a single-sided disc. Let's further say that the movie takes up the full 25GB (not unreasonable) for a 2-hour movie. To watch it streaming in real-time would require roughly 3.5MB/s, if my quick-n-dirty calculations are correct. That's at or above saturation for the majority of broadband subscribers in the US. You'd need a hell of a lot of buffering to make it work. That, or a massive rollout of to-

  • Hmm, well during Xmas I was really leaning forward getting some kind ofhigh def format player, and almost got a hd-dvd for my Xbox 360.

    Even though the decision (not to get it) was made by thinking about the noise the Xbox makes during a quiet scene, I would be definitely kicking myself reading these news if I got the damn device.
    It also makes me want to buy a PS3 a bit more (just a bit more, but that bit is definitely there).
  • Maybe it's the name (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jeff1946 ( 944062 )
    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.
  • by elwinc ( 663074 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @11:01AM (#21953968)
    It's all about the momentum! Sure, NTSC DVD is still President, but it's flaws are well known and everybody scorns it even while we're stuck with it. But of the new guys, HD-DVD offers stability: compatibility with existing DVD players and big money (Microsoft) backing. Blu-Ray has higher peak bandwidth and potentially more room on the disk; i.e. more hope for a better future.



    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.

    • by Shados ( 741919 )
      Where do people get that Microsoft is backing HDDVD anyway? If you brush aside (quite likely) assumptions that Microsoft wanted to stall the "war" to push downloadable content, they really were behind both. Their only direct support of HDDVD was the player for 360, and that decision had little to do with the format itself, and more to do with the -console- war and price (they simply could not have pushed a 400$ addon, which is probably what it would have cost at the time)

      All around, Microsoft doesn't care f
  • reading this article about HD DVD losing another supporter, and right below the article, Blu-Ray ads constantly appear ......
    so the HD DVD ads are dead too!
  • Am I the only person who doesn't plan on buying either HD DVD or Bluray, no matter which one wins the format war?

    I hate the idea of spending hard earned cash on DRM infested discs that will be obsolete in five years.

    I already made the mistake of spending $1000+ on DVD's (now obsolete) and there is no way in hell i'm re-buying them all to line some sleazeball's pockets. For now i'll rely on bittorrent and and my apple cinema display.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Joe Random ( 777564 )

      I hate the idea of spending hard earned cash on DRM infested discs that will be obsolete in five years.

      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.
      • That's a good point actually, I have been thinking about doing Netflix recently and just ripping the best movies for later repeated viewings..
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Blu-Ray players will play your old DVDs.

  • by Stopher2475 ( 780930 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @11:16AM (#21954176)
    Should have known HD DVD would be the loser as soon as they released "Serenity" on it. That show can't buy a break.
  • Heh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Enahs ( 1606 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2008 @11:51AM (#21954696) Journal
    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.

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