Re: Looks like Universal may take longer to roll out BR...

It's my understanding that Universal does not do any in-house authoring. It's farmed out to many outside facilities, including Deluxe, Ritek, and GDMX, just to name a few. I'd be shocked if these facilities are not equipped to do both HD DVD and Blu-ray, seeing as Universal would not be their only client.

And yes, as previously posted, the same transfer can be recycled for both formats. There's a very small, very simple utility written by Microsoft that converts an HD DVD savvy stream to a Blu-ray one (without altering the actual encode, mind you.) EDIT -- This is concerning Microsoft's VC1 codec, WB's codec of choice.

Jason

[Post edited by jpetersen on Feb 17, 2008]

I didn't get the press release yet? Since when is HD DVD done?


I think I'll trust Toshiba, universal and Paramount, before I trust you guys...

You guys can ask Hendrix about this but when they stopped making Laserdisk players the Laserdisk movies were still coming out for quite some time afterwards, a few years if I remember correctly.

I would be surprised if HD DVD movies stopped being produced just like that. You will probably still see the occasional new release come out for a while still. There are a lot of HD DVD players out there still and the prices just get cheaper and cheaper now. In other words there's still a market for the product.

It may not be the same case as laserdisc though. Even though the technology was abandoned in the states, it was still a major seller in Japan. The last release that I am aware of was The Phantom Menace. But HD DVD was never adopted so widely there, so that could factor in.

VideoCipher, you made some interesting points. but this quote:

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I would expect Universal and Paramount to first go Format-Neutral, to continue to reap profits from existing HD DVD equipment owners, while they work towards deploying Blu Ray.

Unviversal has no expirience with Blu ray and judging by Warner foul ups in the past in producing in both formats I think it would be logical just to pick one format. That's two production lines producing 30 gig HDDVD disks and 50 gig Blu ray disks, that can get expensive.

Umm... speaking of Universal, is that it for their new releases after this Tuesday? American Gangster looks to be the only new one and nothing yet scheduled or announced for the rest of the year, apart from their catalog title "Fletch" to be released March 11.

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It was called Total HD, but WB decided against releasing it about a year ago.

They decided not to release it when Paramount went HD DVD as WB would be the only studio releasing movies on it.

As for universal, it will take them awhile. They have a real stick up their ass about Blu ray and no one really knows why.

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They decided not to release it when Paramount went HD DVD as WB would be the only studio releasing movies on it.

That was just part of the reason. WB knew that a "third type" (HD/Blu-ray hybrid) of disc would only cause further confusion amongst consumers, so they did the sensible thing in dropping it.

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There's a very small, very simple utility written by Microsoft that converts an HD DVD savvy stream to a Blu-ray one (without altering the actual encode, mind you.) EDIT -- This is concerning Microsoft's VC1 codec, WB's codec of choice.

Simple utillity written by Micro$oft eh??

That would mean "software licensed from Micro$oft" is needed to perform that very simple VC-1 encode, but Micro$oft has still not dropped it's support of HD DVD yet.

Sounds like a good Back-Stab opportunity for Micro$oft to hurt $ony if they wanted to.

There is still a Game Console War going on, and I don't see Micro$oft doing $ony any favors, plus if HD DVD fails in the movie market, it still is likely to become a big player in the Optical Data market due to it's cheaper cost to manufacture discs, drives, and burners for PC's.


Sure, the M$ licensing agreement now goes like this, you can use our Software Encoder Utility and VC-1 CODEC for only $50Million per Blu re-encode.

That's a nice chunk out of the entire box office take for many films, and even more than the entire production cost of many films.

Movie execs everywhere start soiling themselves, as they suddenly realize they need new Encoding software, and a new CODEC.

Oh wait, there is already MPEG-2, let's go back to that while we plot a new strategy.

Result, a market flooded with Blu discs that look no better than regular DVD's, and $ony better get those 4 and 5 layer Blu discs ready for market, because they are going to need every bit of the room on them to do MPEG-2 and still keep all of their audio formats.

Sorry, no Blu players currently on the market will play 4 and 5 layer Blu media.

Is it time to go buy a new Blu player again????

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Unviversal has no expirience with Blu ray and judging by Warner foul ups in the past in producing in both formats I think it would be logical just to pick one format. That's two production lines producing 30 gig HDDVD disks and 50 gig Blu ray disks, that can get expensive.

It's not a big deal to release in both formats, many smaller studio don't think so. They already have DVD to attend to, and in Universal's case, they don't do their own replicating anyway. The WB packaging thing was 100% due to incompetence and not the 'daunting' task of keeping track of two HDM formats.