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March 25, 2005
Sony May Unite Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD
Top exec says the two competing formats may come together.
After more than a year of touting Blu-ray Disc as the best technology to replace DVD for storing high-definition video, a top executive at Sony, one of Blu-ray's major backers, has opened the door to the possibility of unifying the format with its arch rival, HD-DVD.
"Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing and we haven't totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise," Ryoji Chubachi, Sony's president-elect, said at a news conference Thursday in which he discussed the company's performance and future strategy.
The statement may surprise backers of the rival camps, who have assembled consortiums of major electronics companies, disc makers, and Hollywood studios to promote the formats in a battle that echoes one fought a quarter of a century ago between Betamax and VHS.
HD-DVD backers, which include NEC and Toshiba, say HD-DVDs can be produced for about the same price as DVDs and are backward-compatible with DVDs and CDs, making the format more convenient for both consumers and the industry. HD-DVD movie titles, PC drives, and players are all due out by the end of the year.
Sony has steadfastly promoted Blu-ray as a technology that has greater capacity, saying this makes the format more useful because more content can be stored on a disc. The technology also has wider support in the technology industry, although release dates for movie titles have not yet been announced.
Reaching a Compromise
Chubachi's comments mark the second time that a Sony executive has signaled the possibility of a compromise between the two camps. In January, Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president of Sony, said a format war was not in the public interest and that Sony had not ruled out the possibility of uniting the formats.
As Sony's future president, Chubachi's remarks Thursday may carry more weight. Currently head of Sony's electronic components and manufacturing businesses, he will replace Kunitake Ando as Sony president on June 22 following the recent shake-up of Sony's top management. That shake-up saw Kutaragi step down from Sony's board, although he still heads its important gaming business.
Kutaragi also admitted in January that Sony, by supporting its proprietary audio encoding system and not the widely-supported MP3 format, had lost ground to competitors such as Apple Computer in the portable music player market, which Sony had once dominated with the Walkman.
While Sony's technological and engineering base is sound, the company must ensure that its products are aligned with the wants of consumers, Chubachi said. Sony's engineers have traditionally been regarded within the company as heroes and the creators of new markets, but recently their ideas have not always led to products that matched consumers' needs, he said.
Category : Industry News
Posted by dvd software at 04:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Cosby, Different World to Disc
TV's top-rated program for five seasons in the '80s--The Cosby Show--is coming to DVD on Aug. 2.
Just three weeks after striking a deal with Anchor Bay Entertainment to release Roseanne and 3rd Rock From the Sun on DVD, Carsey-Werner has signed a multi-year deal with a different indie DVD distributor--Ventura Entertainment--to handle the biggest sitcom yet to be scheduled for release on DVD, as well as its spin-off A Different World.
The deal gives Ventura rights to all eight seasons of Cosby and all six of A Different World, the latter of which will debut on DVD in January.
Both series will be released under the Ventura label UrbanWorks Entertainment, a division appealing to urban markets--was a factor in the decision of Carsey-Werner. Carsey-Werner spokesman James Anderson said the company has always looked for the right fit for all its programming, whether it was broadcast networks or syndication.
DVD rights to the company's That '70s Show went to Fox. Other Carsey-Werner series yet to be released on DVD, such as Cybill and Grace Under Fire, could go to any of those three distributors or another one.
Shopping the series around results in stronger ideas for the DVD and ensures that the distributor is on the same page as Carsey-Werner relative to how the DVD will be marketed, he said.
The Emmy-winning Cosby Show and A Different World were the first two hits for C-W, which made it even more important that Carsey-Werner chose the right company to distribute and market the DVDs, co-president and chief operating officer Robert Dubelko said.
Details of plans for bonus features on the series have yet to be determined but Bill Cosby has already provided his input, according to Anderson.
The Cosby Show ran on NBC 1984-92. A Different World, initially starring Cosby co-star Lisa Bonet in 1987 before she left World and returned to Cosby in 1989, starred Jasmine Guy through the end of its run in 1993.
"This agreement highlights Ventura's ongoing commitment to develop key relationships with premiere content partners," said Eric Doctorow, chief operating officer of Ventura Entertainment Enterprises.
UrbanWorks is one of several labels at the 12-year-old Ventura, which provides sales, distribution, marketing and financing services for independent producers and studios in the home entertainment marketplace. Others include youth-oriented extreme programming division StudioWorks Entertainment; Studio Latino; and the cult, specialty film label Ventura Select.
Category : Industry News
Posted by dvd software at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2005
DVD+RW Will Hit Higher Speeds
New drives, discs, and recorders should be hitting stores later this year.
Consumers can look forward to a new range of high-speed rewritable and double-layer discs, recorders, and drives hitting stores in the second quarter of the year, members of the DVD+RW Alliance said at a news conference during the CeBIT trade show here this week.
DVD+RW (DVD+Rewritable) 8X products will be able to copy a full DVD in under eight minutes, while double layer DVD+R (DVD+Recordable) 8X products will be able to copy an 8.5GB double-layer DVD in about 15 minutes, says Frank Simonis, strategic marketing director of Philips Optical Storage, which is part of Koninklijke Philips Electronics.
The DVD+RW Alliance is a group of more than 70 vendors promoting compatibility for optical disc storage technologies. Among the vendors, Philips is expecting to introduce DVD+R into the market in May, he says.
The new DVD+RW speed is twice that of the previous generation, which was introduced in 2003. The previous speed for double layer DVD+R was 2.4X, and media and drives first went on sale in May last year, according to Andreas Kuesters, marketing manager at Ricoh Europe.
Challenges Ahead
The venerable DVD format may face challenges later in the decade from next-generation disc formats such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, both of which offer much higher storage capacities for recording high-definition content. But DVD will remain the mainstream technology for storage for at least the next two to three years, given that some people are still in the process of switching from VHS to DVD, Simonis says.
A near-complete version of the double layer DVD+R specification was finalized in February, and version 1.0, considered the version that vendors can start to build products with, will be ready by the end of April, Simonis says.
Despite being a relative newcomer to the market in 2001, DVD+RW is included in all PC drives and in 55 percent of consumer recorders, Ricoh's Kuesters says.
Category : Industry News
Posted by dvd software at 03:28 AM | Comments (0)
Apple Joins Blu-ray Assn. Board
The Blu-ray Disc Assn. has added Apple Computer to its board, indicating growing support among PC makers for the high-definition disc format.
Two other leading computer makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, also are board members.
"Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Assn., the next-generation optical disc for storing high-definition movies, photos and other digital content," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. "Consumers are already creating stunning high-def content with Apple's leading video editing applications like iMovie HD and are anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high-def DVDs."
Apple said its next release of QuickTime, its digital media player, will support the MPEG-developed H.264/AVC video codec also adopted by Blu-ray.
No word on whether Jobs' Pixar animation studio will throw its lot in with Blu-ray. Disney, which now distributes movies for Pixar films, supports Blu-ray.
Category : Industry News
Posted by dvd software at 03:24 AM | Comments (0)