“Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD-DVD following Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that could sound the death knell of HD-DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end,” Matthew Garrahan and Mariko Sanchanta report for The Financial Times.
MacDailyNews Take: And yet another defeat for Microsoft. MS couldn’t manage to shove DRM-laden WMA down the market’s throat, their tired and bloated WIndows platform is losing share to Apple’s superior Mac, and now they’ve failed at pushing the inferior HD DVD over Blu-ray, but, boy, do they have a Big Ass Table (with which to divert attention from their myriad failures; not yet shipping, of course)! Pizza Huts’ tabletop Ms. Pac Man machines cower in fear.
“Paramount and DreamWorks Animation, which makes the Shrek films, came out in support of HD-DVD last summer, joining General Electric’s Universal Studios as the main backers of the Toshiba format,” Garrahan and Sanchanta report. “However, Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, is understood to have a clause in its contract with the HD-DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.”
“It is unclear whether DreamWorks Animation has the same get-out clause in its contract with the HD-DVD camp. However, Paramount and DreamWorks have a close relationship, with Paramount distributing DreamWorks Animation films,” Garrahan and Sanchanta report. “The two companies also signed their HD-DVD contracts at the same time.”
“Meanwhile, Universal has declined to comment on its next- generation DVD plans following the Warner move,” Garrahan and Sanchanta report.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Too Hot!” and “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Blu-Ray it is. Bye HD-DVD!
All we need now is for Steve to announce the new AppleTV with Blu-Ray and online video rentals — the ultimate living room device.
none of this will really matter. The days of fixed format media are coming to a rapid close… Though it is fun to watch Microsoft losing influence left and right!
Die HD DVD! Die!
Just think of all the poor people that bought xbox with the promise of Hd-dvd. Oh the humanity, and nashing of teeth.
If the days of fixed format media are coming to a rapid close. The the Cable and Telcos better hurry up and get Cheep Fiber the the Home in a damn big hurry!!! To bad they took the Billions the US federal government gave them in Tax breaks to do so and just lined there pockets with it.
Die, HD DVD, DIE!
It’s about time! Finally, the better technology wins!
I was waiting to buy the soon-to-be-released Samsung hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD player… not now!
spudly… Yes, but here in the good old US of A where the gummint spends our tax money on more and more cleverly efficient ways of killing and making the rich richer, it’ll be decades before the infrastructure has been upgraded to handle the sheer mass of data flow required to view Full-HD content on all those Full-HD flat panel TVs that have been selling like hotcakes the past few years. There was an article i read someplace recently that 50% of US households have them now.
I don’t want to grow old waiting for movies to download.
So, it looks like shiny little disks will remain a reasonably efficient form of content delivery. They’ll be with us for some time to come.
*sing it friends!!*
Chairs are being thrown in Redmond today, today.
Warner said to Microsoft “No way, no way”
Bluray is here to stay, to stay!
But Apple announced a MacPro today, today.
It doesn’t have a BluRay, no way, no way….
I would love tho think that Supdly is correct and that we’ll all be downloading out HD content in the future, instead of shuffling plastic discs. However, whoever believes the HD optical media has no future is seriously and grossly overestimating bandwidth in all but minuscule fraction of the developed world. While there may be countries like South Korea, or some parts of the United States (for example) that have decent broadband that would allow for reasonable HD downloads, the remaining 95% of population is still 10 years away from that. During those ten years, a standard optical format will definitely help with faster adoption/migration to HD.
It is great that we’ll finally have this optical standard soon.
@poor m$
I am one (Bitten twice because the first drive died after a few months and MS screwed me over as a peripheral it only gets 90 day warranty) I also have a PS3 so I’m coverd on both fronts. Can’t wait till this is over and Bluray brings down the price of the disks they should be near the price of DVD not 1.5 to 3X the price.
Nail —> coffin.
MDN, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Microsoft continues to innovate and is on the rise. Big time. I don’t see Apple at CES. Who delivered the magnificent keynote at CES? That’s right, the brilliant Bill Gates. Apple is out of their league when it comes to consumer electronics—they simply don’t have the fortitude and guts to play with rest of the home entertainment companies.
HD-DVD is alive and well, thank you. Besides, Microsoft doesn’t need a bunch of little movie studios to sanction HD-DVD. 97% of computer users are fanatic Microsoft loyalists who will demand the superior quality and barely-there DRM HD-DVD offers. The studios will see the error of their ways. This will be a massive grass roots effort that will wipe Apple out once and for all. Buh-bye Apple.
Your potential. Our passion.™
partners in bed Universal & Microshit… What to do??? Maybe universal just comes out & says the obvious Microshit stinks big time. Or maybe not they’re both trying to get Apple…Yet another costly lesson for Microshit’s partners, sooner or later you’ll either be dumped by the world’s biggest & least innovated software company when it sees fit (Play for Sure, anyone?) or you’ll just have to dump it beause its so called innovative technology is actually nothing but poorly copied & badly executed applications from Apple or from someone else. Learn from it ‘parners’, oh & don’t get bribed as in this case (isn’t Paramount just cashed a $150millions check to exclusively support HD DVD?)
Blu-ray cannot die, theres thousands of people with PS3’s. Where blu-ray isn’t an option.
Sure theres many more xbox people, HD-DVD doesn’t come standard on xboxes.
jihad to paramount for making Transformers HD-DVD format
That’s when DMD (nee FMD) will suddenly walk onto the scene.
http://www.ddatainc.com/