Paramount abandon Blu-ray! HD DVD exclusive!

Yes it was announced last week you can find the official press release here

Paramount's films released on both formats were often better on HD DVD. For example the Blu-Ray version of World Trade Center was encoded in MPEG2 and the soundtrack was 640kb/s the HD DVD version of the film was encoded in VC1 and had a Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack with a bitrate of 1536kb/s.

It will be interesting to see if Warner make a similar announcement in the coming months. Warner are currently neutral, releasing titles on both formats, but overall have tended to favour HD-DVD, expressing frustration with having to delay various blu-ray releases due to interactivity issues.

The Paramount/Dreamworks announcement puts the two formats on a more even footing. Warner also switching to HD-DVD exclusivity could well be a tipping point. Of course New Line have yet to release any titles on either format and everyone with any interest in this kind of thing realise that they are going to be very influencial in peoples buying decisions. I'm sure the BDA are working *very* hard with these two studios to prevent any further bad news.

I can play discs of either format so these kind of announcements are 'interesting' but don't really affect me that much; I can still watch any movie, any format. Would I want to sit this out - not a chance. I've enjoyed watching films in high definition on my projector for almost a year now. I still watch DVD but there's no way I'd willingly give up my hd players.

Allan,

I suppose I am a frustrated Hi-Def wannabe.

I simply won't invest until the market has clearly chosen a preference, or I believe that both formats have genuine traction; currently I don't think either have got sufficient market penetration; but I'm glad your getting your hi-Def fix!

M

Let me put my 'investment' into context. I have a Toshiba HD-E1 HD-DVD player and a Sony BDP-S300 Blu-Ray player. You could go out tomorrow and buy yourself both of these players together, new, for a total price of about one-fifth of a DVD5.

I watch a mixture of bought and rented disks. The last high definition disk I bought was Kingdom of Heaven - Directors Cut on blu-ray which cost £12.99, although most disk are typically around the £14/£15 level. For disk I don't especially want to own I have a DVD rental subscription by post with amazon.co.uk and rent hd-dvd's and blu-ray discs in the usual way at no extra cost.

I would estimate that my movie viewing currently divides into about one-third SD-DVD and two-thirds HD-DVD/Blu-ray.

Top 50 DVD sales at amazon.com at the moment contains the following titles on HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc:

4. 300 HD DVD
7. 300 BD
9. Heroes HD DVD
13. The Departed HD DVD
14. Casino Royale BD
15. POTC (COTBP) BD
17. POTC (DMC) BD
22. Shaune of the dEad HD DVD
24. The Fifth Element BD
28. Bourne Supremecy HD DVD
33. Happy Feet HD DVD
34. Apocalypto BD
36. Batman Begins HD DVD
39. The Big Lebowski HD DVD
40. TMNT HD DVD
43. Blood Diamond HD DVD
44. Planet Earth HD DVD
45. The Departed BD

18 out of the top 50 is pretty good. Also on amazon.com, Toshiba HD-E1 is currently the number one selling DVD player. Looks like things are gaining a bit of momentum.

Allan, do you see a big/any difference between the quality of the HD-E1 picture and that of the BluRay machine?

The reason I ask is that the HD-E1 cannot do 1080p. It 'only' outputs 720p/1080i. The Sony can output at the native 1080p. My interest here is that Pioneer have been claiming that most people cannot see the extra quality of 1080p over 1080i/720p at more than 3m from a 42 or 50' plasma. If you're saying that it's questionable on a projector (probably 4 times the size), then one wonders whether 1080p is really worth chasing, and what we should really be getting fussed about is Deep Color.

I have a slight preference for the image I'm getting from the Sony. I suspect this is because I've got the Sony setup to output 1080/24p direct off the disk whereas the Toshiba E1 can't do this and is outputting 1080/60i which I'm processing via an external video processor back to 1080/24p. In theory the inverse telecine conversion back to 24p should be identical to the data stored on the disk but in practice I'm finding the direct image to have a touch more clarity. Somthing you'd only notice in an A/B comparison though.

BTW, the HD-DVD version of 300 has moved up today to being number 2 in the DVD sales rankings on amazon.com

Interesting article by Harry Knowles:

aicn

DVD sales figures for Paramount's DVD/HD-DVD release of Transformers at amazon.com have the two formats at:

#4 for HD-DVD
#14 for DVD

I honestly suspected that HD DVD would beat Blu-ray in the end and it seems to be the case...

I thought the same when there was the battle between Minidisk and Philips DCC - that Minidisk would win I mean.

I was a bit too young for the Betamax VHS conflict, but didnt VHS win due to there being more VHS pornographic videos?!

Hmmm.

Jon

quote:

Originally posted by Consciousmess:
I was a bit too young for the Betamax VHS conflict, but didnt VHS win due to there being more VHS pornographic videos?!

this is what I've read countless times! and the same seems to apply to the hd-dvd as well. lower procution costs and royalties made the difference here.