Paramount and DreamWorks Go HD DVD Exclusive

[Dorza]

The HD DVD group scores a major win in the high definition disc war

The back and forth between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps took an interesting twist today. Paramount and DreamWorks Animation announced today that they will exclusively support the HD DVD standard worldwide. The two companies previously supported both high-definition disc formats.

Paramount and DreamWorks claim that the decision to go solely with HD DVD came after extensive research on market conditions as well as lower overall production costs for HD DVD discs. As a result, upcoming movie releases including "Blades of Glory," "Transformers" and "Shrek the Third" will only be available on HD DVD for those looking to get a high definition fix.....

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Will others follow suit I wonder?

[charleski]

Interesting, probably sets back the end of the format war by 18 months at least.

[Skinleech]

It's not much of a war when 90% of people are still buying DVD and have not contemplated the move to HD formats.

There have been a lot of crap BD disks released (granted, they've been sorted out later on) and the BD specs are still not finalised, so they keep adding things that older players can't support.

I'm all for HD-DVD for this reason alone so am happy to see a few blockbusters coming as HD-DVD exclusives.

I have access to both formats though, so I don't really care!

[Sinizter]

Good news .... for the HDDVD supporters.

I am resigned to being dual format for the next 3-5 years. Already got both.

I prefer HD-DVD because they are region free (atleast they are now).

[directhex]

I prefer HD-DVD because they are region free (atleast they are now).

so are most blu-ray discs

the reason i find this puzzling is that there's still no price competition in hd-dvd players: the only company manufacturing home HD-DVD players is toshiba. conversely, blu-ray players are made by sony, panasonic, samsung, and philips. lg are the odd ones out, and i'd wait for them to actually implement blu-ray properly before considering their dual format player.

blu-ray's got more titles (e.g. 180 versus 113 titles stocked by woolworths; 207 versus 122 stocked by hmv), the cost delta between players isn' that bad in yankland (as if the movie companies care about europe), so i can't see the advantage in more studios prolonging a consumer-unfriendly format war

[Sinizter]

so are most blu-ray discs

the reason i find this puzzling is that there's still no price competition in hd-dvd players: the only company manufacturing home HD-DVD players is toshiba. conversely, blu-ray players are made by sony, panasonic, samsung, and philips. lg are the odd ones out, and i'd wait for them to actually implement blu-ray properly before considering their dual format player.

blu-ray's got more titles (e.g. 180 versus 113 titles stocked by woolworths; 207 versus 122 stocked by hmv), the cost delta between players isn' that bad in yankland (as if the movie companies care about europe), so i can't see the advantage in more studios prolonging a consumer-unfriendly format war

The key difference being "most BDs" ... Which means I have to look it up before I buy it. With HDDVDs if I feel like an impulse buy I can.