Paramount and Dreamworks going HD DVD exclusive

[kak]

Even if it is a firmware update, how many people are going to go to Sony's website, download the firmware, burn it to a CD, and update the firmware just to watch a movie?

Its not to just watch the movie, its the included extras that the HD-DVD supporters have been saying BR discs lacked. If its that important to people, they'll upgrade the firmware. Heck, the firmware upgrade could be put on the disc and automatically bring the player to date [at least to view the content]. Its not like there are hundreds of BR or HD players out currently.

[Dogan]

LOL the deal is just 18 months? :laugh:

Oh and btw:

Bay to Paramount: "No Blu-ray, No Transformers 2!"

Source

Exclusive: Spielberg "Big Supporter" of Blu-ray, But Future High-Def Releases Uncertain

Source

[sn00pie]

Even if it is a firmware update, how many people are going to go to Sony's website, download the firmware, burn it to a CD, and update the firmware just to watch a movie?

Most people who own HD players at this time of are ?ber-geeks, so updating a simple firmware (for us) is a simple joke.

People have always said HD-DVD > BD because of more extra features on the disc, and now BD will have those extra features. What makes HD-DVD superior then BD now? I'm not saying it's inferior either, but it'sdefinatly not> the superior product.

[goji]

Being "superior" is completely subjective to the consumer.

To my understanding Blu-Ray is engulfed in copyright protection where has HD-DVD is flexible enough to be backedup to your PC. Regardless of the legality of the issue, for some of us this can be a big thing. Hard Drive prices are super cheap these days and backing up these large mediums really isn't that crazy IMO. However in terms of image and audio quality, the more space the better. And for the persons who advocate the min-games that accompany their movies, my god stop. Movies are for movies. To heck with the interactivity, I want to see a kick arse movie in HD.

[TruckWEB]

LOL the deal is just 18 months? :laugh:

Oh and btw:

Bay to Paramount: "No Blu-ray, No Transformers 2!"

Source

Exclusive: Spielberg "Big Supporter" of Blu-ray, But Future High-Def Releases Uncertain

Source

Both of them are so full of themself... Prima Dona. Maybe Transformers 2 will be better then!

Oh and lets not forget that Toshiba is working (or is it done?) on the 3 layers HD-DVD for a total of 45GB. Those should be readable by current player. It's 5Gb less than Blu-Ray, but it's close. If storage is the only thing that makes all of you beleive BD is the best.... Oupss : Source

I don't care, I'm using HD-DVD and from the look of it, most movies (even new release) seems to look better on HD-DVD than Blu-Ray. I realy don't know why.

Edited August 21, 2007 by TruckWEB

[spenser.d]

LOL the deal is just 18 months? :laugh:

Bay to Paramount: "No Blu-ray, No Transformers 2!"

Source

I don't know why you guys are downplaying this. A year and a half is a long time and this could swing things a lot. You just don't know until it's over.

I also cut the rest of your post because I'd like to point out that Michael Bay has since retracted his statement. Check the thread on that topic for the source.

Honestly, I'd like to see HD-DVD win, mainly because I think Sony is arrogant, but if it comes down to it, I'd rather have Blu-ray win than have two separate formats.

-Spenser

[TruckWEB]

Something else to read here.... A new spin on the topic.

Paramount and Dreamworks go HD-DVD: Sony's curse continues

[sn00pie]

Blu-ray camp fires back at latest HD DVD announcements

read this too

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33444/128/

[Ironman273]

read this too

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33444/128/

Umm.. considering that your tgdaily article is from 4 days ago (before "the" announcement) and TruckWEB's is from today (after "the" announcement) yours loses to the updated article since there is now more information to consider that wasn't available on the 17th. Thanks for playing.

[QuarterSwede]

Don't know if this has already been stated (because I don't feel like wading through 8 pages [111 posts]) but I doubt this is true with Blockbuster and Disney going Blu-Ray exclusive. Especially since this week Target is carrying more Blu-Ray titles than HD-DVD (3:2).

[gigapixels Veteran]

Don't know if this has already been stated (because I don't feel like wading through 8 pages [111 posts]) but I doubt this is true with Blockbuster and Disney going Blu-Ray exclusive. Especially since this week Target is carrying more Blu-Ray titles than HD-DVD (3:2).

Doubt this is true? There's an announcement from Paramount linked in one of the posts you didn't feel like wading through. It's definitely true.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

LOL the deal is just 18 months? :laugh:

Oh and btw:

Bay to Paramount: "No Blu-ray, No Transformers 2!"

Source

Exclusive: Spielberg "Big Supporter" of Blu-ray, But Future High-Def Releases Uncertain

Source

Michael Bay HD-DVD post

08/21/2007 07:51 PM

Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three Blu-Ray owners, they were ****ed about no Transformers Blu-Ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.

As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.

So today I saw 300 on HD-DVD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!

Michael Bay

His personal blog

[TDQuiksilver]

18 months eh? Heh. :p

[TruckWEB]

18 months eh? Heh. :p

In this technology world, where everything is moving fast, 18 months is a long time. Enough time to take over IF it's what happen. And IF HD-DVD happen to be the hot ticket this Xmass (good price, backed by Amazon.com), do you really think that Disney, Fox will not want to be part of this? They probably wont go exclusive to HD-DVD but it would be enough to make them do movies in both format...

And with Sony loosing money with the PS3, they can't afford to loose money with Blu-Ray. Sony Picture/Screen Gems/MGM can't loose money, so maybe, just maybe, we could see HD-DVD from them....

It's just wishfull thinking....

But don't laugh at 18 months, it's enough to make something happen.

[Boz]

Guys guys guys, you have been reading too much Blu-Ray FUD and damage control.

Okay, where to start:

- Amir Majidimehr, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation Consumer Media Technology Group, an insider (to put it mildly) has personally stated MANY times that Microsoft for example did not pay Paramount nothing and that the decision Paramount made was purely theirs.

Question for Amir. Did Microsoft and/or its representatives have any involvement (either directly or indirectly) in influencing this decision by Paramount? And, if so, was it all cleared by MS legal staff? This is very strange and unexpected news. Thanks.

Amir: Our involvement is the same as it is with other studios publishing in HD DVD: we help them on technical front. This is a decision made by Paramount/DW and not triggered by anything specific we did. Explaining the benefits of the format.... When you have a movie like Transformers, Shrek, etc., you want to know that the optical distribution does justice to it when it comes to interactivity and such. Same explanation we provide to all content companies...

Sony Insider accusation: Bear in mind there are many, many ways a company can provide "incentives" to another company without writing a check. It is virtually impossible to justify the decision Paramount made without very significant direct incentives from someone, and history would suggest an obvious candidate.

Amir: While you say is generally true, it is not in this case. You are barking the wrong tree if you think we went and put out tons of incentives to win them over. We did not have any involvement of the sort. I repeat again. All we are going to do is help them get titles created. Same thing we do for many other content owners.

Now, I am curious however how many of the above tools were used by your camp. Do you have any data about "obvious candidates" there regarding BB, Target, Fox, Disney, LG, etc.?

It goes on and on..accussations from Blu-Ray camp, ridiculous sites like Digital Bits, EngadgetHD and similar that simply can't live with the fact that studios slowly but surely, for MANY reasons prefer HD DVD. It came to that point that legal threats to Bill Hunt (owner of Digital Bits) as he was competely going nuts today with posts talking about payoffs, Microsoft lying and just going nuts. It's been like this all day long, pretty pathetic.

People, if you want to read why Paramount switched read the interview with Alan Bell, CTO of Paramount Pictures. It is quite normal that some kind of compensation happened between HD DVD Group and Paramount simply because this is how marketing works. Paramount would probably be partially endoursed by certain amount of money for marketing costs and possibly some production costs in order to give them a boost releasing more titles. The 150 million numbers and 18 months contracts are COMPLETELY unconfirmed and honestly ridiculous information and is Blu-Ray FUD and damage control. Let me remind you that if ANYONE is to be pointed out that's Sony. These reports originated from Blu-Ray.com at first and unforuntely ended up on New York Time where they noted 2 Paramount executives have confirmed the deal (where these unnamed sources will always be a mistery, how convenient). Sony on the other hand by dear Blu-Ray supporters, have spent close to $6 billion on MGM, Blockbuster, Target end-caps and most definitely payoffs to Disney and Fox.

But back to the story, Mr. Bell pointed out that from this moment on Paramount plans to support HD DVD indefinitely.

You can read the whole interview for PC World. In case you don't know who Alan Bell or doubt his expertise is here's who the man is when he was working for Warner Bros:

As Senior Vice President, Warner Bros. Technical Operations Alan is responsible for advanced technology and requirements development across a broad range of areas centered on the preparation, distribution and consumption of digital motion picture content and related derivatives. Dr. Bell's current areas of interest include the development of next generation HD DVD standards, digital home entertainment networks, including the technologies and issues associated with digital content rights management and copy protection.

In 1995, Alan was centrally involved in the unification of the DVD format, and shortly thereafter the developments that resulted in the CSS scrambling methods for DVD. For the last eight years he has focused on the technical development and cross-industry issues involved in the development of comprehensive rights management architecture. Dr. Bell has co-Chaired the Copy Protection Technical Working Group since its inception. Dr. Bell's career has included positions at IBM Research and RCA Sarnoff Labs.

In recognition of his contributions to the introduction of DVD and to the development optical storage technology in general, Dr. Bell was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2001 and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1984. Alan received his doctoral and bachelor degrees in Physics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University. "

Most people consider Toshiba and Warner as the co-creators of DVD Forum but IBM also played a critical role. And Alan was the center of it. He left Warner about a year ago and became the CTO at Paramount. Needless to say, during his stay at Warner, he was fully involved in all aspects of HD DVD (was the representative to the board) and BD (due to publishing in that format). So if there is someone who knows the capabilities of both formats including manufacturing difficulties thereof, it is him.

here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c...gy/article.html

I strongly encourage you to read these two articles too as they are relevant to the whole happening.

First one is an interview with Rob Moore, President Worldwide Marketing, Distribution and Home Entertainment for Paramount Pictures in regards to the exclusivity and Spielberg catalog. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33722

and the real control Spielberg has over Dreamworks catalog here: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/DreamWorks-...-Ship-5857.html

You guys have to realize that EVERYTHING, accussations about payoffs, limited exclusivity stories, "undisclosed sources", Fox coming out with a list of release dates as that means anything (those release dates can change like they did before), Steven Spielberg crap that's been talked about etc etc are ALL Blu-Ray PR Damage Control and with only one intention to shake things up and try to lowe the impact of the FACT that Paramount is now HD DVD exclusive with Dreamworks and this also means Viacom network in general.

The fact is that Spielbergs PR person said and I'm paraphrasing "Even though Spielberg does prefer Blu-Ray, and Close Encounters will be on Blu-Ray, this is the only title that will be published in 2007 and in the near future on hi-def. Other titles are on per movie basis". What this means is that Spielberg will wait and won't be releasing any other titles in the near future. I think that in the deal 2 movies were not included with this Spielberg control in addition to Transformers. One is War of the Worlds and the other is Saving Private Ryan.

I won't even go into the retraction that Bay posted on his site, as in fact he might've been poised by Blu-Ray propaganda in terms of Paramount going HD DVD as end of the world. Logically, I'm inclined to believe that he actually went to Paramount offices, seriously discussed with them, they pointed out the benefits that HD DVD will give him as a director and to his movies including web connectivity and features, he saw how 300 looked great as there was no difference in quality over Blu-Ray, but when he saw all the features that will be appealing to the regular folks, he retracted his opinion. It did come as a surprise but this scenario is also possible and actually more probable. The whole idea that he was kicked in the ass and forced to retract his posts on his forum is pretty laughable.

If you guys think that this is the end of HD DVD news, you are mistaken..there are still big surprises in store for this CEDIA. What it will be, I don't know, but I think it will be possibly another studio going neutral or HD DVD and finally Chinese players being most likely sold at Walmart. I don't know details, but it has been hinted by many insiders at sites I post and when I say insiders they are CLEARLY identified and what positions they hold in the companies, unlike Blu-Ray crap where it's always "I was told...", "unnamed sources.." etc etc.

All in all, try to be logical what's going on. This is BDA we are talking about here. They HAD to come out and post all kinds of garbage as Paramount and Dreamworks going HD DVD exclusive is simply HUMONGOUS!

Cheers.

Edited August 22, 2007 by Boz

[TruckWEB]

Thanks Boz for the great post. But Sony will feel the pain of loosing money on such deals to try to push Blu-Ray. They are loosing money with the PS3 and Sony Entertainment is not doing that great (movie wise). I wonder for how long they can fight?

Everyone here that invested in the PS3 or the $1100 first-gen Blu-Ray player will bark and fight and say that it's the best... But those are not the real source of good information.

[Mathiasdm]

Everyone here that invested in the PS3 or the $1100 first-gen Blu-Ray player will bark and fight and say that it's the best... But those are not the real source of good information.

I can agree to that. But keep in mind that there are some very strong supporters of HD-DVD around too, that often don't offer an unbiased view either.

[mattmatik]

His personal blog

Good lord, he sounds like a complete idiot. What he means to say is "Paramount read my blog, and realizing that they are my employer and have invested millions in my crappy movies, I'm now seeing the error of my ways."

Hilarious stuff.

[semifamous]

I don't understand...

HD-DVD = 15 GB

Blu-Ray = 25 GB

Personally, when it comes to using discs to back up my data in the future, I hope that the larger disc will be readable in any location I take it.

No biggie though. With my low income, I'm not the target market for this stuff anyway yet. I don't own an HD TV and I don't have plans to buy one, so DVD quality is just perfect for what I'm watching.

I just have a drive that has 150-some gigs of stuff on it that I need to burn. I'm waiting for the winner in this format battle to be declared. When I broke down the content into manageable chunks, it was approximately 25 DVDs of data. I *really* like the idea of being able to put it all on 3 or 4 BD-R DL discs instead or 5 or 6 HD-DVD DL discs.

[HeartsOfWar]

From what I can read, Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD in every way except DD+.

What we need is for someone to take screenshots of an HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movie in all its glory so we can compare.

And who cares about interactive menus, etc. If you buy DVDs for that crap you must be insane...

[NateB1]

I don't understand...

HD-DVD = 15 GB

Blu-Ray = 25 GB

Personally, when it comes to using discs to back up my data in the future, I hope that the larger disc will be readable in any location I take it.

No biggie though. With my low income, I'm not the target market for this stuff anyway yet. I don't own an HD TV and I don't have plans to buy one, so DVD quality is just perfect for what I'm watching.

I just have a drive that has 150-some gigs of stuff on it that I need to burn. I'm waiting for the winner in this format battle to be declared. When I broke down the content into manageable chunks, it was approximately 25 DVDs of data. I *really* like the idea of being able to put it all on 3 or 4 BD-R DL discs instead or 5 or 6 HD-DVD DL discs.

Just get a cheap 150 Gb external HDD and back your stuff on it. Take the HDD and store it someplace safe. Problem solved. Also, you can use Firestreamer to back up stuff on miniDV tapes (each tape stores between 15-20 Gb of data).

From what I can read, Blu-Ray is superior to HD-DVD in every way except DD+.

Yep, Blu-Ray contains an additional layer of DRM and features region codes. HD-DVD has neither.

That is why I support HD-DVD. No region codes, less DRM = better for consumer. Not to mention the coding language for HD-DVD is much simpler than Blu-Ray's low level Java.

[HeartsOfWar]

honestly, I don't see where region codes and DRM make a difference. you have software out there already that will strip that in a hot second.

I agree that overall DRM and region codes are bad practice for consumers, but I wouldn't completely trash the better format because of it...

[TruckWEB]

honestly, I don't see where region codes and DRM make a difference. you have software out there already that will strip that in a hot second.

I agree that overall DRM and region codes are bad practice for consumers, but I wouldn't completely trash the better format because of it...

Well, having region free HD-DVD means that I can buy exclusive HD-DVD title form Europe that are not out, here in Canada/USA, and be able to play them on my HD-DVD player without having to strip any DRM....

So this is a BIG win for me.

[Huleboeren]

Well, having region free HD-DVD means that I can buy exclusive HD-DVD title form Europe that are not out, here in Canada/USA, and be able to play them on my HD-DVD player without having to strip any DRM....

So this is a BIG win for me.

Which movies gets released in Europe before Canada/US? :huh:

and what movies are in Europe that are not in Canada/US? :p

[kak]

Just get a cheap 150 Gb external HDD and back your stuff on it. Take the HDD and store it someplace safe. Problem solved. Also, you can use Firestreamer to back up stuff on miniDV tapes (each tape stores between 15-20 Gb of data).

Yep, Blu-Ray contains an additional layer of DRM and features region codes. HD-DVD has neither.

That is why I support HD-DVD. No region codes, less DRM = better for consumer. Not to mention the coding language for HD-DVD is much simpler than Blu-Ray's low level Java.

Why does DRM matter if you aren't copying the movie? Tell me please. I don't buy this whole "OH I NEED A BACKUP" nonsense. If by backing up you mean downloading a disc, then yes, DRM can be a pain. Otherwise, its complete nonsense. Region codes have been in place since regular DVDs hit the shelves so why act like its a big deal now? Oh yeah, because there has to be something to complain about other than it being made by Sony.