Paramount and Dreamworks going HD DVD exclusive

[kak]

Is that the best reply you can come up with?

Just because you think Blu-ray is the best doesn't make it so. Blu-ray sales were never crushing HDDVD sales. They may have been better, but they weren't crushing anything.

-Spenser

2:1 - 3:1 is a ratio. When you consider the sales are in the hundreds of thousands, the difference becomes a bit more noticeable. BR is at least doubling up on profit. If that isn't an obvious victory, I don't know what is.

In other news, Fox/MGM is going to fast-track their renewed support for BR.

Source: Here

[spenser.d]

It's obviously not a victory if other studios are still signing exclusivity over to the competitor. Even if they bought the exclusivity, the fact that they were able to do so shows that they obviously weren't close to lost.

-Spenser

[PL_ Veteran]

Paramount Drops Blu-ray Support; Does Not Include Spielberg Movies

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=412

What? Can someone please explain to me what's so special about Mr Spielberg? :wacko:

[goji]

Not really, what this means is that it's starting.. the HD DVD full shift. This means that with sub-$200 players, more exlusive studios HD DVD is breaking that barrier.

Which begs the question, why have "HD" anyways if all you can afford is a sub $200 player, probably a TV that cannot receive higher than 720p and a sound system that consists of a Logitech multimedia system? Such persons are better off sticking with with DVD's instead of footing more money for marginally better results.

But trust me guys when I tell you, on the speaker system that most of you have, the difference between DD+ 5.1 and TrueHD is minimal. I'm not saying you should be content, but it's really not a big deal considering what you get for the price. That's all.

Like I said, if you do not have the capacity to enjoy and HD source why invest in it when DVD resolution A/V is seriously enough for the majority of Americans. There is no point and I have yet to hear a compelling argument for such adoption from anyone in any degree of the industry except to drive sales.

Anyway, this deal only benefits the studios and, marginally, early HD-DVD adopters - I bet they are absolutely loving the tens of millions of dollars in easy money they are making from all this. Hell, I would. Hey Sony, you can pay me $10 for my exclusive short film. :p

Long live Format Wars! :rofl: I bet it's all a conspiracy to get those $100,000,000 checks. ;)

The only way to really "win" with this is to purchase a dual player and enjoy. There are movies on both side that I'd love to own, but the cost effectiviness of adoption even a few years into this "war" is still ridiculous.

Now the one thing that should be alarming everyone is when the big boys start rolling out their films to in 16-bit color vs the common standard of 8-bit. Heard about "Deep Color" which HDMI 1.3+ is only capable of? It's being touted as yet another big visual thing which no current film on the market supports, because it only responds to 16-bit color, and if studios began to press discs with this new standard, your current players would become obsolete.

Hollywood has a way of emptying our pockets :no:

Edited August 20, 2007 by GOJI_GKing2000

[Dazog]

Which begs the question, why have "HD" anyways if all you can afford is a sub $200 player, probably a TV that cannot receive higher than 720p and a sound system that consists of a Logitech multimedia system? Such persons are better off sticking with with DVD's instead of footing more money for marginally better results.

Like I said, if you do not have the capacity to enjoy and HD source why invest in it when DVD resolution A/V is seriously enough for the majority of Americans. There is no point and I have yet to hear a compelling argument for such adoption from anyone in any degree of the industry except to drive sales.

480p to 720p is a HUGE increase, 720p to 1080p is marginal

Since it's very tough for the average person to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

[goji]

480p to 720p is a HUGE increase, 720p to 1080p is marginal

Since it's very tough for the average person to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

Yet is it cost effective for the average consumer to spend up to 300 dollars for a player, who knows how much on cables, and then at least 10 dollars more per title to see a difference from 480p to 720p? For a sensible person, the answer is no.

[kak]

480p to 720p is a HUGE increase, 720p to 1080p is marginal

Since it's very tough for the average person to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

Depends on the size of the TV.

[Dazog]

Yet is it cost effective for the average consumer to spend up to 300 dollars for a player, who knows how much on cables, and then at least 10 dollars more per title to see a difference from 480p to 720p? For a sensible person, the answer is no.

Considering the HD-DVD players will be 199 by Xmas and cables cost 5 bucks for an HDMI or 10 if u factor in a optical, where do you get 300 from :rolleyes:

Depends on the size of the TV.

Of course it does but the majority of the market doesn't buy 60" and over sizes.

[Ayepecks]

Paramount Drops Blu-ray Support; Does Not Include Spielberg Movies

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=412

Interesting - that explains a possible reason why they've left BD support and gone with HD-DVD, it would make sense.

Why else would you leave the format that your selling more movies with?

Boooo, there goes my hope. Spielberg and Lucas are waiting to see which format wins. They don't want to be burned again.

Still, some amazing movies in Paramout/Dreamwork's catalogs. "The Island" is awaiting a high-def treatment! :D

[Ayepecks]

2:1 - 3:1 is a ratio. When you consider the sales are in the hundreds of thousands, the difference becomes a bit more noticeable. BR is at least doubling up on profit. If that isn't an obvious victory, I don't know what is.

In other news, Fox/MGM is going to fast-track their renewed support for BR.

Source: Here

FYI: You don't know that Blu-Ray is "doubling up on profit." That's a pretty bold accusation to make. They may be selling more, but that does not necessarily mean profit. You're forgetting all the exclusivity deals Sony has also signed. Honestly, I'd be amazed if either HD DVD group or Sony had much of a profit for either format.

[goji]

Considering the HD-DVD players will be 199 by Xmas and cables cost 5 bucks for an HDMI or 10 if u factor in a optical, where do you get 300 from :rolleyes:

O, I dont' know, here?

And yes, there might possibly be a 199 player by Xmas, but not now and lest we forget: taxes :rolleyes:

Additionally, the mass majority of electronic sales in America are attributed to two B&M stores, Walmart and Best Buy with the latter being number one. No where in those locals will you find a 5 dollar HDMI cable or 10 for fiber optic. There consumers will be buying some pricey cables to go along with their purchases, spending easily 5-600 dollars in one day.

Sorry Kids, going HD is expensive, there are no two ways about it.

[Ayepecks]

$500-$600?

Well, I got an HDMI cable at Walmart for $20.

The HD DVD player will cost $199, plus taxes, so let's say $215, max.

And I'm sure they'll make some sort of "get X amount of movies free" deal.

Not sure how that's $500-$600.

[sn00pie]

Game, you have to read between the lines man. What you just posted comes from a Blu-Ray site. Of course they need to spit and yell that it's foul play because if they don't it will seem that indeed HD DVD is better AND cheaper format and other studios (read Warner or Fox) might go all HD DVD or in Fox case neutral. That post is just trying to dampen this HUGE news and make it seem like HD DVD has to pay studios. But the fact is that Sony has been paying EVERYTHING.

It is highly unlikely that Toshiba would have the financial capacity for something like this..Microsoft...I don't think so as they already have HUGE losses with Xbox 360 problems...so who is left to buy that deal?

It's just like I said..it's very simple..Paramount saw a greater benefit to push HD DVD. Their production will be cheaper, less hassle developing features and compatibility problems and combo capability. These are all valid reasons to go HD DVD. If you were a business which one would you pick?

What you say makes sense. No doubt, your points are always valid. If I was Paramount there's no way I would cut off support for someone who was supplying most of my business, unless of course I knew something was wrong.

It could be production costs, compatibility problems, etc. like you said, or it could be something we don't know about, because now that I think about it, they'd probably make $150 million+ in revenues in a xx years by just selling Blu-Ray movies, unless they realized that they wouldn't, I still don't see why they'd do it to be honest.

I do admit my opinion is (slightly) biased, that's because I own a Blu-Ray player. Just being honest. :D

If we see HD-DVD player drops, you will (probably) see Blu-Ray player drops, production costs are going down on those too, I can see $300-400 players by this Christmas season.

[Boz]

O, I dont' know, here?

And yes, there might possibly be a 199 player by Xmas, but not now and lest we forget: taxes :rolleyes:

Additionally, the mass majority of electronic sales in America are attributed to two B&M stores, Walmart and Best Buy with the latter being number one. No where in those locals will you find a 5 dollar HDMI cable or 10 for fiber optic. There consumers will be buying some pricey cables to go along with their purchases, spending easily 5-600 dollars in one day.

Sorry Kids, going HD is expensive, there are no two ways about it.

GOJI, don't mean to offend anyone, but dude your posts are simply not in touch with reality.

You can buy in many places at least $249 A2 HD DVD now. We can expect $199 for holiday season, plus new HD DVD players like Venturer 7000 (Chinese) for about $150. HD DVD add-on right now you can get for $149 with 6 free movies in total. You will pay $300-$450 for A20 and XA2 players that offer 1080p.

As Ayepecks said, 720p/1080i IS HD. Full HD is 1080p. In order for you to enjoy the benefit of 1080p while sitting away from the TV at about 6-8 feet (a normal viewing distance) you will see absolutely NO benefit on TVs 50" and below. On 37"-50" you will indeed see a huge difference going from 480p to 720p because it's not just resolution in question, it's better codecs, remastered discs etc etc. Currently the market is swamped with 720p sets. Anyone who bought a TV in the last year and a half will have 720p HDTV. Very little people, mostly latest models have 1080p capability. To push 1080p onto consumers without clear benefit is simply a ripoff as this clearly benefits CE companies and nobody else.

For a regular person, who already has that Vizio 37-40" LCD or some other lower priced plasma at at around 40,42,50" 720p will look FABULOUS. On TVs smaller then 32" going hi-def is not warranted that much as the benefit is less regardless whether you go 720p or 1080p. You will see much clearer picture with less artifacts but you won't have the full benefit of HD.

So, to make it simple. For a consumer to go at their local retailer now and just shop around they can get the HD DVD player + free movies + all needed cables up to $300 and can enjoy perfect picture.

Let's take a look at Blu-Ray players. The cheapest you can go is PS3, but let's say that entry point for Blu-Ray player is $450 (and I'm very loose here) with taxes it's about $500, you'll probably get movies for free and if you get some needed cables like HDMI or optical audio or whatever it will get you to about $530.

So what are we talking about here? $300 vs $530? And that's with CURRENT prices. There's very little proof that Blu-Ray prices will go down because they already pinched the prices as much as they could. It's more likely that the prices will go up, because by holiday season, the PS3 60gb will be gone and it will be priced back to $599. The cheapest BD player will be $450-$500 Sony BDP-S300. On the the other hand, the pricing for HD DVD player is already pretty clear. It will be from $150-$300 for higher end players and add-on we can expect to be around $129.

By getting Paramount and Dreamworks as exclusives. HD DVD now has the majority of studios or if you want more titles.

Sony/Disney/Fox vs Universal/Paramount/Dreamworks/Weinstein/ with Warner releasing more HD DVD exclusives then neutral titles. You can see what's going on. It's really a matter of time now that either Warner goes HD DVD only, Lionsgate with the financial troubles they are in will most likely go neutral.

This is EXACTLY what I have been talking about all along. When prices hit $200 and lower the major shift will happen. There is a panic in Blu-Ray group now. The panic is because they lost KEY leverage (studio support). Now they have inferior hardware, higher prices and people are going away from them. This will cause retailers to bite the bullet again and start pushing more HD DVD as their sales numbers will change now and I'm more certain then ever that by end of this year, the ration between BD and HD DVD will be something like 1:1 or even in favor of HD DVD. When this happens you can be rest assured that remaining Blu-Ray studios will go neutral as they will realize that Blu-Ray is a sinking ship.

You can't win a war with game console and numbers have been showing that for a while now. Even with 2:1 lead, the attachment ratio was horrible. This was more concerning then temporary making a few hunder thousand dollars over what HD DVD generates. No business looks at short-term they all look at long term and HD DVD is at much better position, fortunately for consumers.

[sundayx Veteran]

If the news read 2:1 ratio favoring HDDVD, people open champagne, "BR destroyed", "No chance", "Sony is going down". But as the news read 2:1 favoring BR, people cry out, "not a victory", "unrealistic", "Sony propaganda", "sales never crushing HDDVD". Thats the reality of Neowin.

I just hope the industry really evaluate the deal that went on with HDDVD and Paramount.

[sn00pie]

Boz, after reading your post, I must admit, I'm starting to agree with you.

Sony/Disney/Fox vs Universal/Paramount/Dreamworks/Weinstein/ with Warner releasing more HD DVD exclusives then neutral titles

That kinda seals the deal if you ask me, looking at that it's clear that HD-DVD has the companies now. :|

[rajputwarrior]

woohoo, i hate blu ray! go HD DVD

[TDQuiksilver]

This isn't even close to a "victory" by any means, nor is it any stake in the grave. As said by a few above, the real winners will be the dual-format players.

Both camps have equally strong studios behind them. These two in particular went for the money offered up front to them by the HD-DVD camp, but if the sales trend continues, who's to say they won't back out of the deal? Seems like logic to me... I'd rather sell two copies on one format for every single copy I'd sell on another format. More profit right? That's what they are after obviously.

If HD-DVD players drop, so will Blu-ray player prices. It's inevitable. Competition is a lovely thing. :yes:

[L3thal Veteran]

I have to tell you though, those companies in that graph that are part of the Blu-Ray Disc Association are huge for Blu-Ray even taking away Paramount and Dreamworks.

[goji]

$500-$600?

Well, I got an HDMI cable at Walmart for $20.

The HD DVD player will cost $199, plus taxes, so let's say $215, max.

And I'm sure they'll make some sort of "get X amount of movies free" deal.

Not sure how that's $500-$600.

Guestimated prices by yours truly reflected what is currently on the market, not future trends with products that have yet be released. Though I will admit, I totally forgot about the 5 free disc promotion, but not discounting that fact, you can still see where consumers would be dropping an inordinate amount of funds to enjoy a new tech; its bound to occur; my bad. :shiftyninja:

[goji]

GOJI, don't mean to offend anyone, but dude your posts are simply not in touch with reality.

I'd like to think not as no one has yet to really counter anything I have said to be false (except for the slight one few posts above :p ). As I have been stating, going HD is about quality, which most consumers will not realize or see the benefits per the amount of funds they are pouring into it. In the long run, most would be better off with standard DVD's IMO. BTW, no offense taken :)

As far as the format war, the analogy to video games is approptiate, though it hasn't been put into proper context. As far as I see it, there have always been two or more consoles on the market, sometimes more, that vied for consumer attention with some owning all of them. Each had propriety titles on them whether it was Sonic, Mario, Halo, Final Fantasy, each one was worth its weight in gold, with very few multi platform titles. Now this same things has spewed over into the movie industry and many are up in arms i.e, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. If anything, most long time gamers shouldn't have any issue with as were used to this treatment, but to each their own. Though like games, as others have alluded to , most titles go multi-platform except for the AAA titles, but even then were seeing a changing of the guard.

Lastly, as far as HD is concerned, in my eyes its all about quality. If in fact HD-DVD wins I hope to GOD that the 50+ gig discs become standard. I am no Sony fan by any means, however, due to Blu-Rays larger disc capacity, movies technically have the ability to be presented far superiorly on this format. Though an isolated incident, taken into consideration the LOTR trilogy. What was a 2 disc set with DTS-EX (I believe) spread over two discs will once again take up more space with DTS-MA and the highest possible quality VC-1 encoding. With the report from Newline stating that these films will use the disc space to its fullest capacity, even a child will tell you that the Blu-Ray version would be the route to go, that is unless the HD-DVD disc is not the 25 gig variant. Though I'm not opposed to switching discs out, the Blu-Ray sounds slightly more enticing. Like I said though, it is an isolated story.

A dual format player is wise, with smart shopping by those that care for the disc that was encoded better. Who would have guessed consumers would become this discerning about this kind of tech. :cool:

[goji]

I have to tell you though, those companies in that graph that are part of the Blu-Ray Disc Association are huge for Blu-Ray even taking away Paramount and Dreamworks.

I am very curious to know how both Denon and Pioneer are feeling about the recent announcement. Both have thrown some considerable muscle behind high quality players without any regard to HD-DVD. Maybe with will change their minds? One can only hope.

[rajputwarrior]

i actually played with a blu ray player today and i don't see why people like them. it's just a higher quality dvd that it's. where is the innovation, i mean HD has interactive menus and the ability to go online so you can download extras and stuff. blu ray doesn't have this, i don't see if people even use both formats would even consider blu ray.

Edited August 21, 2007 by rajputwarrior

[Slimy]

Currently, Blu-ray Disc is exclusively supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM (both owned by Sony) as well as Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Lionsgate. It is non-exclusively supported by Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. However two of these companies, Fox and MGM have effectively stopped releasing Blu-ray titles for the time being. MGM has not released a title on Blu-ray Disc since March 13, 2007 and has no titles with an announced release date. Fox has not released a title on Blu-ray Disc since April 24, 2007 and has no titles with an announced release date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray

[sn00pie]

i actually played with a blu ray player today and i don't see why people like them. it's just a higher quality dvd that it's. where is the innovation, i mean HD has interactive menus and the ability to go online so you can download extras and stuff. blu ray doesn't have this, i don't see if people even use both formats would even consider blu ray.

Who buys movies to download extras and stuff?

You want the best picture possible when you watch a movie, not extras. Or atleast that's the way I think.