Happen to be a HD DVD earlier adopter? Sorry to hear that. Paramount and Dreamworks wants to help switch your library to the winning side and is offering up a $10 rebate. All the studios ask is that when you buy a Blu-ray title of a disk you currently own, mail in a promo certificate along with the proof of purchase from the original disc’s packaging. 

That’s not all good reader, this offer applies to standard DVDs too. The promo will began with Transformers on September 2nd and will run through December 31, 2009.

The recently announced DreamWorks and Intel partnership was expanded upon today with the announcement of InTru3D. The new mark was unveiled by DreamWorks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg at IDF. A clip from Kung-Fu Panda was specifically rendered in 3D for the announcement, wowing the audience with flying spears and falling rocks.

Katzenberg announced that starting in 2009, all DreamWorks features will be authored in 3D. Calling 3D integration was a paradigm shift, he stated (again) that this “was not your fathers 3D”. By holding up a pair of the familiar red/green paper glasses, he called the old way of watching 3D almost comparable to a “cheap gimmick”.

With them kind of fighting words, one would expect to see some pretty bad-ass new tech, drowning us in 3D. However, nothing too new or shocking was unveiled beyond the commitment between Intel and DreamWorks to continue to develop the InTru3D brand. That being said, the clips that were viewed were pretty damn impressive.

In fact, the audience was treated to a short clip from the upcoming film (in theaters 3/09) Monsters vs. Aliens. That blurry character you see up there is The Prez (complete with Ronnie hair) as voiced by Stephen Colbert. You can’t see it in 3D of course, but I did, and it looks cooooool. The tech may still rely on polarized glasses and separate video streams for the left and right eyes, but if this is the type of thing we’re gonna be seeing out of the partnership, then we’re in for some good shows.

HP and DreamWorks, two titans of something, have joined forces, not unlike Voltron, to develop a new LED-backlit LCD technology that “provides accurate, predictable color and a simple color management process.” Let me translate. You know how when you view an LCD sometimes colors will look different depending where on the panel they are? I guess that’s a big enough problem for movie producers to go out of their way to come up with a new technology.

Basically, it’s an inexpensive 30-bit LED-backlit LCD. No need for hyperbole.

via TG Daily

Either DreamWorks is stupid or there are some things going on behind closed doors that no one knows about because there’s really no other explanation as to why they’re still clinging to HD DVD.

“We have a partnership with Toshiba and have an obligation to see this through,” DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said on Tuesday.

“As you know, we have been well-compensated for our support. It really is in their court at this point to really declare what the next step will be. We’re poised either way to jump into the marketplace when the conditions are right to do so,” he said.

Loyalty is a hard thing to come by these days any way you cut it, but this seems rather ridiculous. Toshiba dropped out, Katzenberg. They don’t give a heap load of dung what you do with “Bee Movie”, either. But then again, digital downloads are more than likely going to put Blu-ray to bed so maybe Katzenberg is onto something.

DreamWorks waiting for cue from Toshiba on Blu-ray [Reuters]

Did I say something about HD DVD being dead this Fall? Bloops. Paramount and Dreamworks have announced they’ve joined the HD DVD camp and that means you’ll see Shrek 3 along with any other film from Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films. Dude! Ali Larter in her whipped cream bikini in HD DVD! That’s awesome. Blu-ray can have Spider Man 3, it sucked anyways.

Paramount to offer movies in HD DVD [AP via Yahoo!]

Not all 3-D movies are terrible, but most are rehashed pre-teen jokes with adult innuendos and crappy voice overs. While waiting for Spiderman 3 to start, I had to sit through two previews for PG-rated 3-D animal flicks (yes, one included penguins). I thought that was bad, until I read this Reuters report. Apparently, next year and into 2009, almost every studio will be releasing multiple 3-D flicks, with the majority of them geared at the younger crowd. DreamWorks, Pixar, and the whole gang of studios will all be unleashing multitudes of crap upon the silver screen and this we must endure.

The reason for the surge in talking cats and green ogres? NASA-grade 3-D technology is helping movie studios make big-budget virtual movies. So the more you take your kids to see some IMAX movie in 3-D and the more you see Shrek means more films of the same caliber coming out in the next year or two. Hey if there’s no stopping these flicks, might as well throw on some 3-D glasses, eat a hash brownie, and enjoy them, right? I’ll go get the brownie mix, you get the eggs.

Surge of 3-D films set for U.S. theaters by 2009 [Reuters]