...on large numbers of Blu-ray disks quite soon:
One week after Warner Brothers Entertainment announced that it was abandoning its support for the next-generation HD DVD format in favor of the Blu-ray high-definition format, consumers abandoned HD DVD.
What was a 50-50 market split in 2007 for the high-definition players shifted sharply in Blu-ray’s favor in the new year. For the week that ended Jan. 12, Blu-ray hardware captured 90 percent of the market, according to data collected by the NPD Group, a market analysis firm ...
Oops. DreamWorks Animation and Paramount, six months ago, backed the wrong horse:
Paramount Home Entertainment said today that it will exclusively support HD DVD beginning with Aug. 28 release Blades of Glory.
Paramount said that all movies from Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films will be released in high-definition on HD DVD only worldwide. Films from DreamWorks Animation, which hasn’t yet released any films on high-def, also will debut on HD DVD only ...
“We decided to release Shrek the Third and other DreamWorks Animation titles exclusively on HD DVD because we believe it is the best format to bring high quality home entertainment to a key segment of our audience—families,” [Jeffrey] Katzenberg said ...
Ah well. Everybody places bad bets from time to time. And it's simple enough to switch steeds, of course. You just start releasing your stuff on the format that wins.
My condolences to any tech-heads out there who ran out and bought the HD-DVD format. Hope the player wasn't too pricey. As time goes by, it's going to get harder and harder to find any movies to play on it.
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8 comments:
Of course, DW made a bad bet unless you consider how much they were paid to go HD-exclusive. In which case, it was a no-brainer.
I'm actually hearing a lot of complaints from live-action directors and others about how they don't like Blu-Ray/HD DVDs because it's changing the way they shot the film and putting in focus elements that they didn't want to be in focus.
Well, this was the VHS v. Betamax battle for the 21st century. Will this boost sales of Playstation 3, now that gamers can play Blu-Ray movies as well as games on their boxes? By the way, did XBox 360 back a HD pony in this race?!
Anon #3, PS3 came with Blu Ray from the beguining, in fact, many of my friends bought it mainly as a blu ray player, less a a game console.
R.
O.K. I'll ask the question that no one is asking. Is it really analogous
to the VHS/Betamax situation? Are we losing the superior technology to a corporate pissing contest? Does anybody have the definitive information about that?
Blu Ray Players have come down in cost an average of $100.00 in the last few weeks because of the support of the studios. And they'll continue to come down in cost. Blu Ray is a superior product across the board. Sony lost the Betamax battle (a superior product to VHS as well), but lucky for us not the BluRay battle! I could care less about the politics of it all. All I care about is that since I've spent a chunk of change on a great HDTV, I want the best picture available on dvd, and Blu Ray looks the best in every case I've seen so far.
"DW made a bad bet unless you consider how much they were paid to go HD-exclusive. In which case, it was a no-brainer."
Leave it to dw to go for $$ instead of quality! I suppose that matters to their shareholders. In the short term.
I'm actually hearing a lot of complaints from live-action directors and others about how they don't like Blu-Ray/HD DVDs because it's changing the way they shot the film and putting in focus elements that they didn't want to be in focus.
Those must be directors who were shooting on VHS. Hi-def can't put anything in focus that wasn't in focus on the original film.
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