Paramount to Drop Blu-Ray High-Def DVDs

[akrako1]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070820/D8R4SNOO1.html

Excerpt:

Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (DWA) will offer next-generation DVDs in the HD DVD format and drop support for Blu-ray, further complicating the race between the competing technologies.

Monday's announcement affects the upcoming DVD release of the blockbuster "Shrek the Third" and all movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films, as well as movies from DreamWorks Animation, which are distributed exclusively by Paramount Home Entertainment.

Paramount previously released movies in both formats.

"Part of our vision is to aggressively extend our movies beyond the theater and deliver the quality and features that appeal to our audience," said Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. (VIAB) "I believe HD DVD is not only the affordable high-quality choice for consumers, but also the smart choice for Paramount."

[Wile_E]

This whole two-format thing is really getting on my nerves. Until dual format players become REALLY affordable or there is only one HD standard, most people are going to stick with DVD. This BETA/VHS war has gone on long enough. The movie industry should have agreed on one format.

[lenti_75]

I was reading today...that blue ray sold double than hd dvd this year.....

**** this war....we just ended the = - one....

[xxiangg]

It was such a strange war. The obviousely more expensive one
was doing so well by making all these announcements like blockbuster,
target, and etc. If at the end the BR will be as less expensive as
HD-DVD, I will still be for it. Otherwise, it should go away from mass
market.

Although, this is a great news for me. I wish there is no exclusive deal
from any studio in the first place. All movies should be released for both
formats and let comsumer to decide who should stay here and who
should go away.

[gshelley61]

Interesting development. Perhaps Paramount is reacting to the fact that there are currently more standalone HD DVD players in home theater setups than standalone Blu-ray players, and as of right now they are way less money to purchase (a little over $200 street price for Toshiba HD-A2, for example). There is widespread speculation that Wal Mart will have an HD DVD player this holiday season for less than $200.

Or maybe they are just trying to save money on high def disc production and distribution costs.

I have both types of players in my setup, so I don't care one way or the other about the "war" (other than the obvious and rapid downward pressure on pricing it is causing, which is a positive for everyone). I did start with HD DVD because the player was much more affordable. And no, I do not want a gaming machine in my HT system. I (and probably most movie watchers) prefer standalone players. Apparently only a fraction of gaming machine owners use them for high def disc playback.

"Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution, said market data shows that people who own gaming consoles buy fewer movies than those who invest in a high-definition player that only plays movies."

[edDV]

"Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution, said market data shows that people who own gaming consoles buy fewer movies than those who invest in a high-definition player that only plays movies."

Well duh!

[gshelley61]

"Rob Moore, president of Paramount Worldwide Distribution, said market data shows that people who own gaming consoles buy fewer movies than those who invest in a high-definition player that only plays movies."

Well duh!

[robertazimmerman]

You're all missing the point. Rumour has it that Toshiba gave Dreamworks a $100 million incentive to make this move. Hopefully they'll "convince" a few other studios to do the same and then Sony can go f*** themselves!

Roberta

"Owner of far too many prematurely defective Sony products"

[Conquest10]

To borrow a line from the Blu-ray fanboys whenever any little news comes out: THE WAR IS OVER!!!! HD-DVD HAS WON!!!!

[j1d10t]

So... Star Trek is Paramount, and Paramount is going only HD DVD... No Star Trek on Blu Ray. Hmm. That will probably be a big push for HD DVD, if they hurry up and release the various Star Trek series in HD.

[yoda313]

So... No Star Trek on Blu Ray, only HD DVD... That will probably be a big push for HD DVD, if they hurry up and release the various Star Trek series in HD.

Yes didn't they already make the anouncement about star trek on hddvd the other day??

Whenever I do make the push for hdtv that may swing me towards hddvd. Unless I end up buying a ps3 dirt cheap at the dollar store

Although - whenever Star Wars makes the jump to HIGH DEF that could really tip the BALANCE OF THE FORCE

[j1d10t]

Yes didn't they already make the anouncement about star trek on hddvd the other day??

From what I read, at the San Diego Comic-Con Paramount said they would release Star Trek on HD DVD, but after that they issued a statement saying that they will release them in HD, with HD DVD first, and they had plans for Blu Ray to follow.

Probably no Blu Ray plans now :P

Although - whenever Star Wars makes the jump to HIGH DEF that could really tip the BALANCE OF THE FORCE

Big time Can't wait for that!! That will probably push me in the direction of that format.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Why don't they release on both formats so everybody wins?
If the studios want Joe sixpack who shops at Walmart to buy HD movies then they need to pressure Toshiba and Sony to build a dual format player,until that time they are shooting themselves in the foot.

[yoda313]

[quote="moviegeek"] Toshiba and Sony to build a dual format player,until that time they are shooting themselves in the foot.


LG already makes one - the superblu or something. Problem is it costs more than buying a seperate bluray and a hddvd player together. Now if everyone started buying the lg multiplayer and dropped the prices to the same price as a ps3 or hddvd player than we'd finally be able to beat the format wars.

[rumplestiltskin]

I do H264 from my iPod and AppleTV to my SD TV. Any new "movie disc" format (BluRay or HD-DVD) doesn't interest me. This junk is an answer to a question nobody asked.

[josetjr]

I do H264 from my iPod and AppleTV to my SD TV. Any new "movie disc" format (BluRay or HD-DVD) doesn't interest me. This junk is an answer to a question nobody asked.

H264 works on the PS3, a blu-ray player. Also h264 is one of the blu-ray codecs.

This is really a stupid move. Let the consumers make the choice, dont go by old statistics and bribery money. Another thing this will likely cause is possibly another big company bribed to go blu-ray exclusive such as Warner or Fox.

[MJPollard]

Why don't they release on both formats so everybody wins?
If the studios want Joe sixpack who shops at Walmart to buy HD movies then they need to pressure Toshiba and Sony to build a dual format player,until that time they are shooting themselves in the foot.

What's shooting them in the foot is not backing one single HD standard. All involved had the chance to create a single, unified standard, but factors ranging from ego to greed scuttled it. Now we face this mess.

F*ck all of them. Until one single format emerges as the clear winner, I'm not even going to begin considering replacing my considerable investment in DVDs with high-def versions. I refuse to let the movie studios dip any further into my pants, plus I refuse to risk my money on the losing horse (whichever one it may be).

[computerchuck]

Not to cause a problem, but the whole problem right now is content. Right now you can get a lot of HDTV content on satellite and cable. Hell last week d...network just offered external storage on usb hard drives. Who needs blue ray or hd dvd when you can just offload your hd from pvr to usb drive. way cheaper than replacing content not to mention all the star wars you can handle in HD. Problem solved and no burner necessary. And now I own all 6 starwars in HD and not to have to worry bout scratches or skips or what format it is on.

[josetjr]

^good point. Except that most people are lazy and dumb so all they want to bother with is going to a store and buying or renting the video.

[rumplestiltskin]

I do H264 from my iPod and AppleTV to my SD TV. Any new "movie disc" format (BluRay or HD-DVD) doesn't interest me. This junk is an answer to a question nobody asked.

H264 works on the PS3, a blu-ray player. Also h264 is one of the blu-ray codecs. <snip>

My point was that the entire concept of physical discs is so 20th Century.

[MJPollard]

All Aunt Jenny and Uncle Forrest want to do is pop in the disc and hit PLAY. They don't want to be confused by competing formats ("But they both look the same!"), missing features ("It said it could do this!"), and firmware upgrades ("Firm-whaaa?"). They're confused enough by high-def without introducing more of it with HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray.

Those of us who have the technical savvy to handle duplicate formats, firmware upgrades, downloading HD content to USB sticks and PVR drives, etc., are in the extreme minority, as usual. We don't drive the market, and never have. There aren't enough of us around to allow the studios to rake in the zillions of dollars they currently do on DVD marketing. If they ever want to achieve that with high-def, IMHO, they'd better get their act together before their cruise ship morphs into the Titanic.

[Wile_E]

I need to add one more comment on these HD formats...

If they want people to be impressed by these HD formats, the studios need to start cleaning up the transfers. What good is a HD transfer, if a lot of frames throughout the movie look like shit with dust, hair particles, and scratches on it?

I no longer buy DVD's that are not fully remastered and digitally cleaned frame-by-frame. And I'm certainly not going to waste money on a HD movie if the studios didn't clean it up. I don't care if the movie is 50-years-old and in black and white. They need to hire post-production houses to clean the transfers and do it right the first time.

Example: Waterworld. It's mostly on the opening credits, but it looks horrible to me.

[edDV]

...

Example: Waterworld. It's mostly on the opening credits, but it looks horrible to me.

Maybe because the movie rated so poorly they figured why bother to clean the film?

I think the Waterworld DVD may draw more sales now since Jeanne Tripplehorn has increased popularity (HBO Big Love).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld

[SingSing]

All Aunt Jenny and Uncle Forrest want to do is pop in the disc and hit PLAY. They don't want to be confused by competing formats ("But they both look the same!"), missing features ("It said it could do this!"), and firmware upgrades ("Firm-whaaa?"). They're confused enough by high-def without introducing more of it with HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray.

Those of us who have the technical savvy to handle duplicate formats, firmware upgrades, downloading HD content to USB sticks and PVR drives, etc., are in the extreme minority, as usual. We don't drive the market, and never have. There aren't enough of us around to allow the studios to rake in the zillions of dollars they currently do on DVD marketing. If they ever want to achieve that with high-def, IMHO, they'd better get their act together before their cruise ship morphs into the Titanic.

I agreed. But Japanese corp. has that if you build it, the Americans will buy it belief.

[rumplestiltskin]

BluRay & HD-DVD are buggy-whips.

[SatStorm]

doom9 posted his thoughts regarding this move and I agree with him. The HD-DVD camp finally decided to play Sony's game, that's all...

[edDV]

doom9 posted his thoughts regarding this move and I agree with him. The HD-DVD camp finally decided to play Sony's game, that's all...

Sony has a lot riding on this. They have screwed up most of their other businesses and face stiff competition in their remaining strong areas (LCD-TV and projection TV + pro products). Their defensive consumer Alamo includes their movie production oligopoly, Blu-Ray distribution, consumer display+consumer games. The movie production oligopoly weakens without Blu-Ray distribution power.

[gotnotime]

Wow, Waterworld, with movies like that how can the HD-DVD format fail.

[racer-x]

Personally, I couldn't care less about Hollywood movies. I'm only interested in a storage/playback medium for my hi-def content created by me with my HDV camera and DSLR still images. For now, I'm perfectly content storing and playing back on my TVIX 4100 SH with a 500 GB HDD. It can play back just about anything, like H.264, WVC-1, Mpeg-2 TS, XVID ect. 1080p play back is a breeze and I can use any framerate I want...........

Now, when the HD-DVD or Blueray players get below $100, then I'll buy one. I'm pretty happy playing my hi-def content the way I'm doing now in the meantime.

[TheUnknownComic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/technology/21disney.html?ei=5088&en=d4e1f285e2f41437...+4r1NyAsum87vQ

Quote: Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified.