A probably fatal blow in the high-definition battle between HD-DVD and competing standard Blu-Ray was cast on Friday when Warner Brothers announced that it would be, starting in May 2008, exclusively Blu-Ray. Subsidiaries New Line Cinema and HBO Films were excluded from the announcement, leaving those studios free to make their own decisions. However, it is expected that both will follow Warner into the Blu-Ray exclusive camp. Warner Brothers will likely continue to honor any existing HD-DVD promises through May, though HD-DVD releases will lag behind standard and Blu-Ray title releases.
The decision of the last major studio to support both formats to change its stance to be now exclusive to Sony Blu-Ray forced a quick cancellation of Toshiba's planned CES announcement for HD-DVD, since Warner Brothers was said to feature prominently in that press release, being touted as one of the success factors for HD-DVD and one of the most prolific studios to release high-def titles.
HD-DVD supporters, Toshiba, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures & subsidiary Dreamworks, and Universal Studios remain the only significant backers of HD-DVD while the Blu-Ray camp includes not only major studios Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Sony Pictures-Columbia Studios and now Warner Brothers, but most of the smaller studios and distributors as well as most hardware and PC vendors. The Warner move gives the Blu-Ray camp about 70% title share, according to the Financial Times; with more to follow IF Paramount (and Dreamworks) exercises an alleged clause in its HD-DVD switch agreement that allows it to reverse its exclusive move if Warner were ever to drop HD-DVD. Even prior to the Warner announcement, a number of smaller studios that had been HD-DVD exclusive announced that they would be supporting Blu-Ray as well, indicating growth for Blu-Ray, while no such defections occurred from amongst the exclusively Blu-Ray supporters. Even the controversial decision last year for once-format-neutral Paramount and its subsidiary, Dreamworks, to defect to the HD-DVD camp excluded any Dreamworks films by Steven Spielberg, who was said to be either a backer of Blu-Ray or someone who favored supporting both formats.
Warner Brothers executive, Kevin Tsujihara, specifically mentioned that Warner Brothers did not take any money from the Blu-Ray group to come to its decision, contrasting the decision last year of Paramount and subsidiary Dreamworks, to switch from format neutrality to be exclusive to HD-DVD, a move the New York Times later revealed to have been motivated by a payout from the HD-DVD group for $100 million and $70 million respectively to make the switch. Warner Brothers was said to have been courted with a similar deal to switch to HD-DVD exclusivity, which had it occurred, would have likely ended in a format stalemate.
This move by Warner Brothers was said to reflect industry concerns that the format war was hurting the overall adoption of either format since consumers were both confused and wary of purchasing product that could at one point become obsolete. This has kept high definition disc sales stagnant at a minute fraction of potential sales compared to standard DVD. Director Michael Bay, who was highly critical of Paramount's decision to switch to the HD-DVD camp and who was initially furious that his blockbuster Transformers would only appear on HD-DVD, openly stated his opinion that the money used to essentially bribe Paramount and Dreamworks came from Microsoft and that Microsoft's true motives were not to back HD-DVD but to ensure that the format war would continue until Microsoft could develop a high-definition digital download service, undercutting both. Apple Computers, which does continue to expand its own digitial downloads service for movies, was a backer of Blu-Ray and recent news has indicated that Apple intends to offer Blu-Ray drives in its computers at some point soon.
There has been no news on how this might effect the third format, VMD, which unlike either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, uses a red laser and is said to offer a much cheaper alternative for high-definition content for vendors since it does not require the same level of retooling to produce the discs. It seems likely though that the Warner Brothers announcement will spell doom for this late-comer on the high definition scene.
Update: Apparently New Line Cinema made the expected move to Blu-Ray exclusivity. This will bring the impressive New Line catalogue over to exclusive Blu-Ray distribution, expected to include the Blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy whenever that anticipated title makes its high-definition disc debut. There is no word yet that I've seen about HBO Films.
Also, the purported reasons that Michael Bay assigned to Microsoft support of HD-DVD may well come to pass at some point, subsuming movie disc sales to those of digital downloads in the same fashion that CD sales, though still strong, continue to give way to digital downloads. In addition to Microsoft X-Box Live, the pairing of Apple iTunes & Apple TV, and those already available through cable and satellite, Netflix is intending to offer a streaming downloads service as well, premiered at CES. Sony has hinted at much the same for the PS3 with movies and other media potentially available through portals such as Playstation Home. Given that Sony is the only hardware vendor that actually owns their own extensive movie catalogue, competing services might find themselves starved for certain titles or scrambling to lock up exclusive deals of their own. If such fractured availability should occur, I would think it could only harm the adoption of digital downloads in the same way that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle harmed mass adoption of either format.
Update: HBO Films have moved to Blu-Ray exclusivity as well. There is some rumour that Paramount/Dreamworks is mulling a move away from HD-DVD according to the Financial times, Universal possibly as well according to Variety, despite statements to the contrary made by both studios. Both studios have declared support for HD-DVD but Paramount's only move so far is to delay two forthcoming HD-DVD titles by three weeks. And further questions have been met with a no comment response.
In any case, I think the final summation of all this is that it's too bad that the studios could not have made a compromise forestalling this format war. This see-saw battle not only hurt themselves and left both standards in jeopardy of being preempted by direct downloads, but seems likely to have left over a million adopters of HD-DVD bereft of future title releases and having to hope for after-market solutions to keep their HD-DVD high-def title investments viable down the road. Apparently corporate memories are short and the lessons learned in the debacle that occurred between VHS and Betamax that helped lead to universal adoption of a single CD and DVD standard had since been forgotten.
The decision of the last major studio to support both formats to change its stance to be now exclusive to Sony Blu-Ray forced a quick cancellation of Toshiba's planned CES announcement for HD-DVD, since Warner Brothers was said to feature prominently in that press release, being touted as one of the success factors for HD-DVD and one of the most prolific studios to release high-def titles.
HD-DVD supporters, Toshiba, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures & subsidiary Dreamworks, and Universal Studios remain the only significant backers of HD-DVD while the Blu-Ray camp includes not only major studios Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Sony Pictures-Columbia Studios and now Warner Brothers, but most of the smaller studios and distributors as well as most hardware and PC vendors. The Warner move gives the Blu-Ray camp about 70% title share, according to the Financial Times; with more to follow IF Paramount (and Dreamworks) exercises an alleged clause in its HD-DVD switch agreement that allows it to reverse its exclusive move if Warner were ever to drop HD-DVD. Even prior to the Warner announcement, a number of smaller studios that had been HD-DVD exclusive announced that they would be supporting Blu-Ray as well, indicating growth for Blu-Ray, while no such defections occurred from amongst the exclusively Blu-Ray supporters. Even the controversial decision last year for once-format-neutral Paramount and its subsidiary, Dreamworks, to defect to the HD-DVD camp excluded any Dreamworks films by Steven Spielberg, who was said to be either a backer of Blu-Ray or someone who favored supporting both formats.
Warner Brothers executive, Kevin Tsujihara, specifically mentioned that Warner Brothers did not take any money from the Blu-Ray group to come to its decision, contrasting the decision last year of Paramount and subsidiary Dreamworks, to switch from format neutrality to be exclusive to HD-DVD, a move the New York Times later revealed to have been motivated by a payout from the HD-DVD group for $100 million and $70 million respectively to make the switch. Warner Brothers was said to have been courted with a similar deal to switch to HD-DVD exclusivity, which had it occurred, would have likely ended in a format stalemate.
This move by Warner Brothers was said to reflect industry concerns that the format war was hurting the overall adoption of either format since consumers were both confused and wary of purchasing product that could at one point become obsolete. This has kept high definition disc sales stagnant at a minute fraction of potential sales compared to standard DVD. Director Michael Bay, who was highly critical of Paramount's decision to switch to the HD-DVD camp and who was initially furious that his blockbuster Transformers would only appear on HD-DVD, openly stated his opinion that the money used to essentially bribe Paramount and Dreamworks came from Microsoft and that Microsoft's true motives were not to back HD-DVD but to ensure that the format war would continue until Microsoft could develop a high-definition digital download service, undercutting both. Apple Computers, which does continue to expand its own digitial downloads service for movies, was a backer of Blu-Ray and recent news has indicated that Apple intends to offer Blu-Ray drives in its computers at some point soon.
There has been no news on how this might effect the third format, VMD, which unlike either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, uses a red laser and is said to offer a much cheaper alternative for high-definition content for vendors since it does not require the same level of retooling to produce the discs. It seems likely though that the Warner Brothers announcement will spell doom for this late-comer on the high definition scene.
Update: Apparently New Line Cinema made the expected move to Blu-Ray exclusivity. This will bring the impressive New Line catalogue over to exclusive Blu-Ray distribution, expected to include the Blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy whenever that anticipated title makes its high-definition disc debut. There is no word yet that I've seen about HBO Films.
Also, the purported reasons that Michael Bay assigned to Microsoft support of HD-DVD may well come to pass at some point, subsuming movie disc sales to those of digital downloads in the same fashion that CD sales, though still strong, continue to give way to digital downloads. In addition to Microsoft X-Box Live, the pairing of Apple iTunes & Apple TV, and those already available through cable and satellite, Netflix is intending to offer a streaming downloads service as well, premiered at CES. Sony has hinted at much the same for the PS3 with movies and other media potentially available through portals such as Playstation Home. Given that Sony is the only hardware vendor that actually owns their own extensive movie catalogue, competing services might find themselves starved for certain titles or scrambling to lock up exclusive deals of their own. If such fractured availability should occur, I would think it could only harm the adoption of digital downloads in the same way that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle harmed mass adoption of either format.
Update: HBO Films have moved to Blu-Ray exclusivity as well. There is some rumour that Paramount/Dreamworks is mulling a move away from HD-DVD according to the Financial times, Universal possibly as well according to Variety, despite statements to the contrary made by both studios. Both studios have declared support for HD-DVD but Paramount's only move so far is to delay two forthcoming HD-DVD titles by three weeks. And further questions have been met with a no comment response.
In any case, I think the final summation of all this is that it's too bad that the studios could not have made a compromise forestalling this format war. This see-saw battle not only hurt themselves and left both standards in jeopardy of being preempted by direct downloads, but seems likely to have left over a million adopters of HD-DVD bereft of future title releases and having to hope for after-market solutions to keep their HD-DVD high-def title investments viable down the road. Apparently corporate memories are short and the lessons learned in the debacle that occurred between VHS and Betamax that helped lead to universal adoption of a single CD and DVD standard had since been forgotten.
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