Paramount Decides to Bail Out on HD DVD
the Blu-ray camp is feeling pretty satisfied just about now!
The Blu-ray camp has more to celebrate today, as it is reported by the Financial Times that Paramount Studios will jump ship, and discontinue support for HD DVD. This comes not long after the announcement from Warner Bros., and makes it almost a slam dunk for Blu-ray.
a lot of early adopters are worried about the long term viability of this logo just now, and many probably have not gotten their free discs that were a part of a player purchase.
As for the HD DVD support left, there is only Universal. Universal is a large conglomerate, but in a global economy, no one wants to stand alone on a standard. Those kind of standards become extinct quickly.
On the heels of the Paramount announcement, chipmaker Broadcom announced a dual format large scale integrated chipset which would allow much easier implementation of dual format players at lower prices. LG released one of these well before Christmas, and it looks like the foresight of those who bought will be rewarded. Apparently the left and right hands of many companies were not in good communication. It certainly seemed strange when I reported that the CEO of Sony wished for the format wars to be over. He sounded a bit worried, as the HD DVD camp had opened with a couple of huge salvos.
perhaps the movie studios should use one of these for communication
The war is not completely over, as HD DVD recorders have shown up in some computers, and although the number is small, it is huge compared to the Blu-ray recorders installed. HD DVD may end up as a storage medium for many things while movies stay in the Blu-ray domain. The use of the Broadcom chipset may cause a rethinking of many manufacturers of DVD players, but the story is not over yet, and HD DVD is not relegated to the same part of the museum as the 8Track tape player just yet.
-
May 27th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
[...] year, news of the early demise of HD DVD brought sorrow to many, as it looked like all the big players were pulling out of the HD camp and [...]