Paramount to drop HD-DVD

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http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/08/paramount_poised_to_drop_hd_dvd/

The Register said:
Paramount poised to drop HD DVD
By Scott Snowden in Las Vegas
8th January 2008 04:58 GMT
Paramount Studios could soon drop its support of HD DVD following Warner's recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, effectively killing off HD-DVD and bring the format war to a definitive end.


According to the Financial Times, in a story that broke only a few hours ago, Paramount 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.

Paramount and DreamWorks Animation came out in support of HD DVD last summer, joining Universal Studios as the main supporters of the Toshiba format.

Warner's decision last week to exclusively back Blu-ray saw it join Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox and MGM Studios as backers of the Sony format. The recent move gives Blu-ray about 70 per cent of Hollywood's output. Universal meanwhile, has declined to comment on its next-generation DVD plans and speculation is rife that an announcement at CES by Bill Gates unveiling an Ultimate Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD player was cancelled at the last minute following the move by Warner.
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:)
V1N

EDIT: Ah, I see this has already been discussed in the "Warner" thread, and debunked already too ;) I got a bit carried away with the feeling of "at last"
 
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Why is the title of this thread 'Paramount to drop HD-DVD'... when the contents of the thread says 'Paramount Studios could soon drop...'

'Could' not being 'will'
 
Stonedofmoo said:
Why is the title of this thread 'Paramount to drop HD-DVD'... when the contents of the thread says 'Paramount Studios could soon drop...'

'Could' not being 'will'
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I accidentally missed off the word poised when I quoted the headline, and when I went back to edit it when I'd noticed, I couldn't change the title, otherwise, I would've.

V1N.
 
Rather smart of Paramount. Sign up for $100million from MS, wait till things go down the chutes, then have the option to go back to releasing BDs again.
After all, does anyone really believe that they could have made that much profit by selling BD during the last few months.
That's some seriously smart business acumen and politics. Of course it was rubbish for the customer, but that's another story.
 
i wouldnt be supprised, if like johnnyfire says, they do switch to blu-ray despite denying it now.

But the bottom line, is that Blu-Ray is the bigger format, and with produces trying to fit hi-def audio, hi-def film, and then stick on loads of interactive content on top, blu-ray was always going to win.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Rather smart of Paramount. Sign up for $100million from MS, wait till things go down the chutes, then have the option to go back to releasing BDs again.
After all, does anyone really believe that they could have made that much profit by selling BD during the last few months.
That's some seriously smart business acumen and politics. Of course it was rubbish for the customer, but that's another story.
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Depends on how much they may possibly have to pay back if they break it- over 18 months (if they stick to the whole length of the contract, thats small change

(Warner claimed to make $40Billion from DVD sales, now I know it wont be anything like that, but $100Million is what 0.25% of that figure..... surely thats possible?)
 
If there is such a clause in the contract then it of course suggests that they expect Warner switching to Blu-Ray to be very serious for the HD-DVD format. I imagine they might hold off on abandoning it, but if the announcement does result in Blu-Ray doing much better that HD-DVD over the next few months I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did defect to Blu-Ray.

I hope they do - I don't have any preference at all between the formats but it would mean that we'd be looking pretty much at a single format within 12 months.
 
It really does seem as its the begining of the end for HD-DVD, bit of a shame really as it has some cracking stand alone players out there.

I just hope that the format war ends one way or another very soon, at least that way I can finally buy a new standalone player. I sold my HD DVD player a month after I bought it, it just wasnt much cop where movement was concerned, sound was also cripled, the format clearly has potental though.

I have just listed the last 4 films of my HD DVD coleection I had been hanging on to, best to sell them now before the offical announcment comes.
 
FrankJH said:
Depends on how much they may possibly have to pay back if they break it- over 18 months (if they stick to the whole length of the contract, thats small change

(Warner claimed to make $40Billion from DVD sales, now I know it wont be anything like that, but $100Million is what 0.25% of that figure..... surely thats possible?)
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Well we're talking about Paramount and not Warner. According to the FT, Paramount made all of $71million in the last quarter, source here:
http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?quer...aje=false&id=071102000580&ct=0&nclick_check=1

As such, $100 million for not selling BD disks for several months seems like a good deal.
 
Bet MS are peeved.

What I really want now is for the Paramount announcement to come very soon and for MS to see sense and accept that HD-DVD is dead. If this happens quickly enough then hopefully we'll see native Bluray support added to Vista in SP1 which will make life a lot easier for those of us running MCE HTPCs.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Well we're talking about Paramount and not Warner. According to the FT, Paramount made all of $71million in the last quarter, source here:
http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?quer...aje=false&id=071102000580&ct=0&nclick_check=1

As such, $100 million for not selling BD disks for several months seems like a good deal.
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The only bad thing is that it seems Paramount didn't have a clue what they were doing. Supporting the underperforming format and then switching back.

Losing company face for a few months will soon be forgotton though :)
 
Vertigo1 said:
Bet MS are peeved.

What I really want now is for the Paramount announcement to come very soon and for MS to see sense and accept that HD-DVD is dead. If this happens quickly enough then hopefully we'll see native Bluray support added to Vista in SP1 which will make life a lot easier for those of us running MCE HTPCs.
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Surely Vista doesn't support HD-DVD playback either though? Both need seperate software at the moment.
 
why are they backing blu-ray!, its so bad for the consumer, fair enough we have eu laws protecting us from sony monopolizing on blu-ray, but if they do it in the rest of world its only a matter of time before were forced into blu-ray simply by a lack of content, and thats without even going into the pain in the back side BD+ is which will require constant fireware updates to play new films, they can do what they tried to do with the drm stuff on there cds except without anyone been able to complain about it!

If you dont believe me, go buy a copy of fantastic 4 silver surfer on blu-ray, put it in your blu-ray player and see what happens.

God i hate sony!
 
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and you think fox wouldnt have done similar things with HD-DVD ?

the movie industry is all about copyright infringement. The studios are so paranoid about it, they'll do anything to try and stop it

that includes releasing discs on an bluray profile that hasnt been released to the players yet

It doesnt matter that nobody can play it, as long as nobody can copy it.

let us not forget that HD-DVD had similar interactive content, constantly updating players via the internet features thing too.

The problem of biscs being released that are not compatible with players could happen on HD DVD too.
 
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They say there is no smoke without fire, I wouldnt be surprised if this happens over the next few weeks.
 
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