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Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, HBO Video, New Line Entertainment and Warner Home Video stood up with Toshiba at the Computer Electronics Show here and pledged that movies such as "Million Dollar Baby," "Harry Potter 4: The Goblet of Fire," "Blazing Saddles," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Jarhead" (not to mention box office clunkers like "Sahara" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow") would come out this year on HD DVD discs.
In all, these five studios represent more than half of the movies ever made, said Nancy O'Dell, host of Access Hollywood and ersatz syndication TV celebrity who served as the emcee for the event at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Europe's Studio Canal and the Weinstein Co., responsible for hits such as "Shakespeare in Love," also will come out with movies in the HD DVD format, according to the HD DVD Promotion Group.
Toshiba, the prime backer of the format, unfurled two HD DVD players--a $499 model and a deluxe $799 model--that will hit shelves in March. Toshiba also showed off a prototype Qosmio notebook with a built-in HD DVD drive. Pricing, availability and specs on the notebook will come out later this quarter.
"HD DVD is now playing," said Yoshiihide Fujii, CEO of the Digital Media Network Co. of Toshiba. "HD DVD delivers a quantum leap in how consumers view video."
By May, nearly 50 titles will already be out, Fujii said.
"Many consumers have made a significant investment in DVD libraries," said Greg Hart, Amazon.com director of North American music, DVD, computer and video games, and software. Amazon began to take pre-orders for Toshiba's units Wednesday. Customflix.com, a company Amazon acquired that burns DVDs for independent and small filmmakers, will give independents a potential opportunity to sell HD versions of their movies to the public.
Microsoft and Intel back the format.
"We have to make sure that content is easier to buy rather than to pirate," said Don MacDonald, vice president in Intel's Digital Home Group.
Many companies, though, will support both. Hewlett-Packard, the largest PC maker behind HD DVD, will also support Blu-ray. Studios will also issue movies under both formats.
"It's too early too tell" which will win, Matt Lasorsa, executive vice president of marketing at New Line Home Video, said in a brief conversation after the presentation. "The ideal solution would be a universal player."
The audience got a chuckle out of the suggestion that all of the kinks in home networking aren't ironed out yet. Kevin Collins, a senior program manager at Microsoft, told the audience of about 200 reporters that he was going to show them how phenomenal HD DVD viewing was. Unfortunately, he couldn't get the movie on Toshiba's HD DVD player to play after several attempts. Collins, however, did manage to get movies running on Toshiba's Qosmio notebook.
See more CNET content tagged:
HD-DVD,
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However, Blu-ray wont make you replace your collection, since it will be backwards compatible with current generation DVDs.
The ONLY reason the HD-DVD camp is still going is Microsoft poured so much $$$ into it to make it a thorn in Sony and the BDA's side. MS figures, if people go buy a HD-DVD player, they wont need the BD-ROM player on the PS3, and in this way they hope to divert people from buying Sony (PS3), making Sony take a fall in the market.
And it's title count, not studio count that matters to the buyers. I don't care what cartel owns the title, just what's on the shelves when I go to buy.
Not to mention that the overhead cost to set up and produce HD-DVD is significantly cheaper which SHOULD (but probably won't due to industry greed) translate into cheaper prices for the consumer and higher initial production capacity.
Furthermore nobody is buying a PS3 for movie watching. It's a fringe benefit, but not the motivator.
PS
You don't actually have to replace your collection, you'll be able to buy a normal DVD player for years to come... I can still get a good deal on a VHS unit!
Yes, several leading consumer electronics companies (including Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and LG) have already demonstrated products that can read/write CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs using a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical head, so you don't have to worry about your existing DVD collection becoming obsolete. Although it's up to each manufacturer to decide if they want to make their products backwards compatible with DVD, the format is far too popular to not be supported. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) expects every Blu-ray Disc device to be backward compatible with CDs and DVDs.
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#2.4
Then again, perhaps a single format might even trump a universal player... ;)
I for one won't be buying either until one dies. No sense in spending premium $$$$ on a disc or player that may not be around in a few years. But wouldn't the studios LOVE that: I buy all my movies in HD-DVD to replace by DVD collection and then 3 years later re-buy them all in Blu-Ray to replace my HD-DVD collection. Not to mention some of these I bought in DVD to replace my VHS collection.
Golly darn it, they won't have to make a single new movie for 5 years if they play their cards right!
of three things...cost, content, necessity.
i love it when a next gen DVD article come up and every geek on earth says 'no way man...holographic is going to kill...'
don't get my poo pooing wrong. i think that its a very promising technology for next generation STORAGE needs (most likely in enterprise/business settings). but probably not in consumer mass produced entertainment applications.
there hasn't been one movie studio to annouce support for this technology. until that happens, holographic challenge to any next gen DVD standard is dead on arrival. sorry man, i don't want to buy all new equipment and watch YOUR home movies.
by most accounts, the holographic drives will start at $15k and discs will start at $100 per. now i realize that over time it'll come down but these starting prices are way higher than both next gen DVDs...and they haven't even started yet. here comes the nasty catch. by the time holographic gets down to some reasonable price, there will be enough next gen optical DVD drives out there (at a lower price mind you) that will continue to put off holographic as a DVD content standard. plus content owners will not want to further confuse the market with another (more expensive) option. prices drop with volume production. volume production comes with consumer adoption. consumer adoption comes with breadth of content.
the last thing is that there is no need for that much storage when it comes to entertainment content. please save your 'but what about having every single episode of MASH on one disk' argument. you know as well as i do that probably 90%+ of the entertainment content out there are movies. even 3 hour movies (and even those are a small minority) will fit just fine in HD on either BD or HD-DVD. and with higher capacity versions of both, this argument becomes less and less relevant. plus no one is going to pay $100 bucks for a copy of a movie. even is volume production gets it down to say $20, content owners will pad it with their margins and make it cost $40...still too high...and still higher than BD or HD-DVD
massive tera storage is useful in enterprise class applications for backup...not in consumer home movie watching.
anyone can afford to keep as much digital entertainment files as
they want. I added 1TB (LaCie ext. FW) to my system for about
$700.
By the time the disk makers finish fighting each other most
people will be downloading their entertainment. The big cable
companies are already rolling out their technology and their are
tons of options for the "adventurous" p2p users as well as
straight shooters.
Stick a fork in entertainment disks. They're done.
I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that this isn't as big of an advantage as it might initially seem anyway. Most consumers probably aren't going to be willing to rebuy films they already own. Collectors, yes, but that?s a minority in the consumer population. This means that they already have standard DVDs that won't be replaced with HD versions. What's a few more going to hurt?
Furthermore, not all current DVD's will be re-released anyway. That's more regular DVDs in the collection. And of course, not all films are even worth owning in HD. The quality can only be as good as its source.
The Topic is on Hybrid!
That paragraph leads to soooo much confusion. Blu-Ray players WILL play existing CDs and DVDs. Please get your facts straight, as executives will lie about the competition.
You've just spread a nasty rumor and will lead to months of "but I thought Blu-Ray wouldn't play my old DVDs!!"
Mike Smith
I know I could not just care and let the hi-def TV scale the movie to its native resolution, but I've seen scaling problems in even some to the best hi-def TVs that I've looked at.
frames per second. Add to that the fact that no HDTV (so far) can
show both 720 and 1080 formats, one is standard, and the other
must be converted within the set to that standard.
In a couple of years, the bog HDTV's should all be 1080i/1080p
standard. And by then, Hollywood should be following along.
If consumers wind up in a state of confusion about which disc to buy, that will add up to a good deal of bad press for either format.
their backwards compatibility advantage are finished (thanks to the laser chip developed, so that you can switch from a red laser to a blue)laser using a single lens!) , their interactivity/managed copy advantage is finished (BD+ can offer java based interactivity, also allowing you to download additional goodies off the internet! Manadory Mangement has been included to allow you to enjoy safe networking of movies over the home, with the movie studio's choice, and their durability advantage (Durabis exclusive to Blu-Ray is scratch proof, compared to HD-DVD's 6 Layers of current DVD manufacturing!). All confirmed my the DVD forum
So all the HD-DvD group can do now, is release fake hype, and release strange rumours about the competition! I say bring on Blu-Ray more 1080p movies, and no pre-arraged pitiful Hype.
NOTE: Please don't reply to this with unconfirmed/old rumours circulating around!
Stu Wright (UK)
- What HD DVD's are already for sale?
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by Stu Wright
January 9, 2006 1:43 PM PST
- I am trying to find where I can buy genuine HD DVD films. Some people are stating that digitaly remastered are high def but most are not as they play on a standard DVD player. Any ideas?
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