Universal, Paramount prepared to drop HD DVD support
- January 11th, 2008
- 7 Comments
HD DVD? What’s that?
Universal has ended its HD DVD exclusivity arrangement and Paramount’s HD DVD contract has an escape clause. Should Paramount exercise that clause, and there’s no reason not to at this point, Blu-ray would have thoroughly won this silly “format war.” Now we can get back to the important business of arguing over more important things, like which gaming system is the best or why the Zune (or iPod) sucks so much.
HD DVD’s fate more or less lies in Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart and other retailers’ hands now. If the retailers see momentum in the Blu-ray direction, they may opt to limit the amount of shelf space they give to HD DVD. That would only accelerate Universal and Paramount’s production of Blu-ray titles.
To videophiles flush with money, the “winner” shouldn’t matter, so long as the studios author their discs properly (remember the abomination that was the first release of The Fifth Element on Blu-ray?). Pirates, on the other hand, are screwed if the BD+ copy protection doesn’t get cracked.
Who knew Warner wielded so much power?
Blu-ray could win high-def battle [Variety via Bits New York Times Blog]
Mark (Who am I?)
8 months ago
This is awesome
AW (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Its not done yet.
darthbith (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Hmmm….
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080111-universal-paramount-deny-move-to-blu-ray-imminent.html
Tereasa (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Anyone else watch the Universal HD channel? An interesting trend I’ve noticed the past few weeks was the lack of HD-DVD commercials. It used to be flooded with Toshiba and HD-DVD ads… but now those are scaled way back and there are Blu-Ray commercials. My estimate is that the Blu-Ray commercials get shown twice as often. I found it interesting that an HD-DVD studio channel would be promoting Blu-Ray (and yes, I understand that Sony could just buy ad time, but one would think there would be some thing in the contract between Tosiba and Universal to prohibit that?).
Marc M. (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Yes, I’ve noticed that as well, but doesn’t anyone else realize that competition makes for lower prices on both ends? If HD DVD is out of the game Sony will jack up bluray prices SKY HIGH because there will be no one else to compete with. Bluray players are already 2-3 times more expensive as HD DVD I don’t understand this move. I thought for SURE HD DVD would win, I don’t know anybody with a standalone bluray player but I know plenty of them with standalone HD DVD players, this is ridiculous,and actualy upsets me. I think HD DVD is the superior technology, I don’t care if bluray can hold more the interface on HD DVD movies is FAR FAR superior and much easy to use #$$# %^^ ##$@# that was me cussing a lot.
Marc M. (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Wait why do comments need moderation? lol
zeda.Zakuya (Who am I?)
8 months ago
i had a feeling from the beginning blu-ray had a better shot even without knowing some of the facts .it just has something new to it unlike hd-dvd is just a dvd on steroids.don’t get me wrong here i love hd-dvd also coz my brother has hd-dvd and the quality is amazing.but seeing so many blu-ray players ou there mostly ps3 and so many studio backing hd-dvd wil not have a long life call it the new betamax.now 6 studios backing bd and 2 hd-dvd man c’mon don’t lie to yourselfs you know it’s over.and for people who think prices will go high again for blu-ray ehhhhhhhh wrong i just saw an 270 $ blu-ray stand alone player. blu-ray kicks ass that’s must have hurt huh you hd-dvd fanboys