Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 23, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Even new releases such as «Shrek the Third» or «Transformers» are to be available in high resolution only on HD-DVD, the Viacom subsidiary Paramount announced on Monday (local time) in Los Angeles. Consumers who want to watch films in HD quality will suffer even more from the format war as a result: Warner Bros. is the only remaining
Hollywood studio that releases films in both standards.
The Sony studio Columbia, Disney and 20th Century Fox have decided exclusively in favour of Blu-ray, Universal Pictures only for HD-DVD. Consumers who want to use their HD-capable television sets appropriately must therefore have players for both formats in the house – or the first combination player from Korean manufacturer LG, which, however, also costs as much as two individual devices together.
As the «Wall Street Journal» reported, Paramount is also receiving «financial incentives» of an undisclosed amount from the industry camp behind HD-DVD for the decision in favour of HD-DVD. It involved both money also as well as marketing support, it was said with reference to an informed person. Both camps court the studios in this way because they hope that the blockbusters can give their format an advantage. DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg stressed in the newspaper, however, that the deciding factor for the decision was not such incentives, but above all the cost advantage of the HD-DVD format. Star director Steven Spielberg meanwhile secured by special deal that his Paramount and DreamWorks films will continue to be released in both standards.
Although a significantly larger volume of data fits on Blu-ray, HD-DVD discs and drives are cheaper to manufacture because they can also come from existing production lines. According to market researchers, the HD-DVD camp is said to lead in sales of playback devices for the living room, but the Blu-ray- Faction has the PlayStation 3 game console as a trump card, which has sold more than six million units worldwide. The Blu-ray camp also emphasises that its software sells twice as well as discs of the competing format.
