Paramount Shifts Focus To Blu-ray Due To HD DVD Space Constraints
By William on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 2:38 AM PST In Sony, Sony
I really hate to give you guys back-to-back articles that are negative news for HD DVD, but that’s life. Soon after I discovered the last article, I came across information showing that Paramount plans to shift it’s focus to Blu-ray due to HD DVD space constraints. Do I see more price cuts on the Microsoft Xbox 360 HD DVD player? I sure do. We all know that Paramount is a huge player in the entertainment industry and this news is big for Blu-ray and Sony. The more viable the Blu-ray option becomes, the more attractive the Sony PS3 becomes in turn.
On August 28th, Paramount will ship its first high definition title to include a lossless or uncompressed soundtrack – ‘Blades of Glory’. This title will feature a PCM 5.1 soundtrack for the Blu-ray release, but will feature no equivalent on the HD DVD, presumably because of the smaller disc capacity. Two weeks later, Paramount will ship ‘Face/Off’ with extras features available in high definition, but only on the Blu-ray version, again due to space constraints.
This is a drastic change from the Paramount we once knew. For the past year, Blu-ray owners have cringed as they saw release after release issued with low bit rate MPEG-2 video encodes and Dolby Digital soundtracks, while the HD DVD versions received VC-1 encodes and higher bit rate Dolby Digital Plus audio. It was disappointing to say the least.
The shift began with ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, which was released with a high bit rate AVC encode for the Blu-ray release. The audio was still lacking, but it was clear they were finally recognizing the Blu-ray consumer as a valuable asset. Now, with the addition of PCM audio, Paramount completes the high definition package and Blu-ray owners can now enjoy their favorite Paramount movies the way they were meant to be seen.
Via Blu-ray.com
I’m not a fortune teller, but signs are certainly pointing in Sony/Blu-ray’s favour. I think they might just win out.
Actually it’s an assumption that Paramount had capacity issues. I don’t know why they think consumers really care about HD extras for Blades of Glory anyways. It sounds like a waste of space. I never watch extras and think “geez I wish these were in HD”. It’s kind of hard to follow the reasoning that Paramount is shifting to Blu-ray when they just announced the HD DVD only Star Trek “The Original Series” remaster.
I think they’re just testing some stuff out quite honestly
hmurchison, if people didn’t care about extras they wouldn’t put them on so they are obviously important.
It is an assumption that the omission of content available on BluRay is down to the lower capacity but I think its a fair assumption. I can’t think of any other reason why.
Star Trek TOS will be also released on BluRay at a later date so whats your point? That is obviously a release they have had planned for some time so it doesn’t mean anything about their commitment to HD-DVD.
paramount is now to produce exclusively HDDVD titles…
http://www.dvdtown.com/news/breaking-news-paramount-and-dreamworks-today-announced-exclusive-support-of-hd-dvd/4677
They were set to concentrate more on BluRay but the HD-DVD group are panicking so much they gave Paramount $150m to only release in HD-DVD for the next 18 months. The deal doesn’t include Steven Spielberg’s productions however.
Basically HD-DVD have bought themselves a bit of time but it won’t change anything in the long term.