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Warner to support Blu-ray?

9 October 2005 14:58 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 5 comments

Warner Brothers is set to raise the stakes yet again in the DVD format battle by deciding to now throw support behind Sony's Blu-Ray Disc format instead of Toshiba's HD-DVD. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are two formats that are battling it out to become the next standard after DVD as the demand is growing for high definition material, which requires much more capacity than DVD provides. The DVD format is worth $18bn annually in sales in the United States.

Adding support from Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, to the Blu-Ray backers list would be a crucial vote of confidence for Blu-Ray which already touts support from Disney and Fox. Back in November 2004, Warner, Paramount, Universal and New Line Cinema pledged support to HD-DVD. Now Warner seems set to declare "non-exclusive" support for the Blu-Ray format, meaning it will probably produce films in both formats.

However the support for Blu-Ray could mean that sometime in the future Warner will drop Toshiba's HD-DVD and release only in the Blu-Ray format. Paramount has already announced that it will release movies in both formats. HD-DVD also got a huge boost with support from Intel and Microsoft. Intel however, stated it would also put support behind Blu-Ray if it had more consumer friendly features like HD-DVD.

The next generation standard, whatever it will turn out to be is incredibly vital to Hollywood. Movie studios are witnessing drops in DVD sales lately as most consumers now own DVD players and some of the favorite movies. So Hollywood needs a format to support HD versions of the movies that can hold way more extra features to sell their movies yet again in another format.

Source:
MSNBC

Thanks to chickenR for the News Submission

Permalink to this article

Blu-Ray costs come into question (28 November 2005)

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer backs Blu-Ray (10 November 2005)

Warner announces support for Blu-Ray (20 October 2005)

HP urges Blu-Ray group to support more features (20 October 2005)

Your HDTV might not play video from HD discs (7 October 2005)

Intel would also support Blu-Ray if... (5 October 2005)

Unified next-gen format standard still possible? (4 October 2005)

Paramount will release movies in both next-gen formats (2 October 2005)

Toshiba confirms HD-DVD delay in U.S. (30 September 2005)

Microsoft, Intel support HD DVD (27 September 2005)

Lions Gate to release content using Blu-Ray format (17 August 2005)

Blu-ray adopts DRM (9 August 2005)

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nonoitall (Member) 9 October 2005 17:13
Quote: The next generation standard, whatever it will turn out to be is incredibly vital to Hollywood. Movie studios are witnessing drops in DVD sales lately as most consumers now own DVD players and some of the favorite movies. So Hollywood needs a format to support HD versions of the movies that can hold way more extra features to sell their movies yet again in another format. That's a good and interesting point. With the crap that Hollywood has been throwing on screens in theaters, I'm surprised anyone even goes anymore. Keeping people occupied with older 'good' stuff might be their only way of making any profit anymore. On with the rest of this story, isn't it odd that Warner switched loyalties so quickly after it was revealed that HD-DVD might not have region codes... [ + quote]
sisph (Junior Member) 9 October 2005 22:47
It doesn't strike me as odd that they switched. After all their loyalites aren't to companies. It's to money. [ + quote]
nonoitall (Member) 9 October 2005 23:37
I know, I was being sarcastic. ;) They do love control, and the money that comes along with it. [ + quote]
chickenR (Newbie) 10 October 2005 6:54
wahey, my news got posted. :) [ + quote]
lxhotboy (Member) 11 October 2005 6:57
Just the beginning and still too far off but if others follow Warner and support the Blue ray then what kind of effect will that have on the Xbox 360 that will not support blue ray disc??? PS3 is suppose to support the blue ray but we will have to wait and hope there are no changes in sony's plans. I think this will just hurt the 360 sales even more making even more people pass up on the 360 and wait on the PS3. [ + quote]