Today's Show:
By now you have probably heard that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation are now exclusive HD DVD studios. So if you want to watch Shrek the III or Transformers on a next generation format you'll need an HD DVD player.
Paramount's CTO on Why His Studio Is Dumping Blu-ray
Why the Change?
According to studio CTO Alan Bell in an interview with PC World, HD DVD came out of the
DVD Forum. The DVD Forum is very experienced at developing and managing specs. [HD DVD] was launched in a very stable way, with stable specifications, and they had specified a reference player model, so all players had to be compatible with the HDi interactivity layer, and all players had to be capable of the interactivity. So when we publish titles in the future that have interactivity, we can be assured that every HD DVD player will be able to handle this content.
Disc Capacity
This is a little bit overrated. Making a choice like the one Paramount has made is a multifaceted choice: It depends upon manufacturability, the reliability of players, the cost, the infrastructure that's developed to support our creation of titles. Many different factors came into play--including capacity. When Paramount made this decision, we considered the broad spectrum.
If everything else were equal, more capacity would be better. Why not?
But if you convert the playing time, a 30GB disc gives you somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of capacity. It depends upon the nature of the movie and how you compress it. There's no compromise on the quality. We've found that 95 percent of movies are less than 2.25 hours long. With a disc whose capacity is 3 or 4 hours, you can put a fair amount of bonus material on that disc as well. So 30GB with the option to add another disc is fine, from our point of view.
Paramount and Dreamworks Animation will be paid $150 million for this 18 month agreement?
Spielberg on Blu Ray
He's a big supporter of Blu Ray and will release future titles on Blu Ray format. But as of today the only high def movie in the pipeline is Close Encounters. There is nothing else planned in either format. This according to his spokesman Marvin Levy.
With this announcement Sony, Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, and MGM are Blu-ray only studios. Warner does both, and Universal and now Paramount are HD DVD only. So in the end you can get movies from 6 studios in Blu-ray and 3 studios in HD DVD.
Blu Ray not silent - just announced
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Live Free or Die Hard
Prison Break
Master & Commander (OCT. 2)
The Day After Tomorrow (OCT. 2)
From Hell (OCT. 9)
The Fly (1986) (OCT. 9)
Edward Scissorhands (OCT. 9)
28 Days Later (OCT. 9)
Robocop (OCT. 9)
Amityville Horror (1979) (OCT. 9)
Battle of Britain (NOV. 6)
A Bridge too Far (NOV. 6)
I, ROBOT (NOV. 13)
Die Hard (NOV TBD)
Die Hard 2 Die Harder (NOV TBD)
Die Hard with a Vengeance (NOV TBD)
Red Dawn (NOV TBD)
MR. and MRS. Smith (DEC. 4)
Independence Day (DEC. 4)
Cast Away (DEC. 4)
Ronin (DEC. 4)
