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Warners TotalHD format postponed until 2008

Warner Brothers, one of two major Hollywood movie studios that supports both Blu-ray and HD DVD, previously announced a Total HD format disc. Total HD is a two-sided disc that contains a Blu-ray Disc on one side and an HD DVD on the flip-side.

This hybrid format would allow Warner to stock one high definition disc product at retailers, reducing shelf space requirements and eliminating consumer confusion regarding what high definition format to buy. The format was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of 2007, with a market release expected as early as this summer. VideoBusiness has the details on the delay and received the following statements from Warner VP Steve Knickerson.

Nickerson said the studio wants to launch the discs with 10 to 20 titles so retailers can merchandise them together in one section and they don’t get lost at retail.

“There is no expiration date on the viability of this concept, so we’re not in a rush to do it,” Nickerson said. “We’ll do it when it makes sense and when it’s right.”

The real reason for Total HD’s delay

Warner has previously stated that their Total HD discs will not be priced “significantly more” than a standard HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc, but any added cost to an already expensive high definition product can’t be good in my opinion. So what is the real cause of this delay? There are many different possibilities. Warner could be holding out until next year in order to see how each format performs this holiday season before making the jump into manufacturing the more expensive Total HD discs.

If both formats hold their ground and both obtain significant marketshare, Warner will most likely go ahead with their Total HD releases in early 2008. If one format becomes significantly more dominant than the other, Warner may scrap the entire Total HD format completely. Either way, we’ll have to wait until 2008 to find out. News found via HDD.

HD DVD Twin format arrives in the US

The first HD DVD “Twin” format disc has arrived in the US, under the anime title Freedom: Volume 1. This title is part 1 in a series of 6 volumes from Bandai Visual, a popular anime production studio in Japan. Freedom 1 is also the very first commercial anime film to be released in high definition in North America.

A twin format disc should not be confused with a combo disc. HighDefDigest breaks down the twin format details on their site.

Unlike combo discs, one side has a printed label, while the other side looks just like a normal HD DVD disc. Pop it in an HD DVD player or a standard-def player, however, and the twin-format disc starts to work its magic, auto-detecting the player format and hopping to the proper layer without the user having to make any selection.

The twin format HD DVD/DVD disc contains one DVD layer and one HD DVD layer, enabling it to be played on either a standard DVD or an HD DVD player. This single sided architecture is more durable than the double sided HD DVD combo disc format, which is easier to scratch or damage.

Do twin format discs cost less to manufacture compared to combo format discs? Possibly. Will the twin format discs become more popular in the US? Probably not, unless a twin format disc with 2 HD DVD layers is developed and readied for the market. For more information on Freedom: Volume 1, visit Bandai Visual.

Get your 5 free Blu-ray Disc movies

The Blu-ray Disc Association will soon be unveiling a new mail-in offer that provides US consumers with the opportunity to receive 5 free Blu-ray Disc movies with the purchase of select Blu-ray standalone players or the Sony PS3 gaming console.

This mail-in offer will be starting on July 1st and runs through September 30th. Rumor is that the offer can also be combined with other existing Blu-ray promos, such as the 5 free Blu-ray movies that are included in the Panasonic DMP-BD10A standalone player. The online home for this offer is bluraysavings.com and the site should be launching within the next few days.



This offer is limited to a select number of Blu-ray titles and you can only choose one title from each of 5 categories. The categories are divided by movie studio and contain the following options.

Category 1 (Buena Vista) includes The Guardian, Pearl Harbor, Invincible and Chicken Little.

Category 2 (Warner) includes Corpse Bride, Phantom of the Opera and Blazing Saddles.

Category 3 (Sony) includes Stealth, Resident Evil 2, Underworld Evolution and Stir of Echoes.

Category 4 (Paramount) includes The Italian Job, Black Rain, Babel and Devil’s Rejects.

Category 5 (Fox) includes Kiss of the Dragon, Omen 666, The Transporter 2, Species, Hart’s War and The Last Waltz.

A response to HD DVD’s 5 free movie offer

This latest Blu-ray promo is strikingly similar to the 5 free HD DVD’s with the purchase of an HD DVD player promo that is being offered by Toshiba. Toshiba first started offering 3 free HD DVD’s after mail-in and more recently increased the amount to 5. Whether or not this is a response to the HD DVD promo, the 5 free Blu-ray movies make it even more enticing for consumers to pick up a Blu-ray player this summer.

What about BD-J?

The Blu-ray Disc Association is requiring all Blu-ray players launched past October 31st to support the full BD-J specifications as well as include additional hardware that is not found in most of the current Blu-ray standalone players. Considering this mandate, this 5 free movies promotion could also be designed to help move the current Blu-ray standalone players that will soon become “out of spec”. With that said, the PS3 already has an extremely powerful set of hardware and is probably (still) the best Blu-ray player available. Due to this, I can only recommend the PS3 as a Blu-ray player at this time. More discussion of this offer can be found on HighDefDigest and CDRLabs.

155,000 HD DVD add-on drives sold in the US

CNet UK is reporting that Microsoft has stated that over 155,000 units of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive have been sold in the United States. The Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on is an external, read-only drive that can be used to playback HD DVD movies through the Xbox 360 console or a computer. Connecting the drive to a computer is not officially endorsed or supported by Microsoft, but it works just fine.

“There were also some surprising stats given. Microsoft was reluctant to tell us how many HD DVD drives for the Xbox 360 it has sold worldwide, but it did tell us that in the US it has shifted 155,000 of them. This is apparently the biggest-selling accessory Microsoft has ever sold for the 360.”

With the Xbox 360 HD DVD drives selling from $199 (and as little as $149 during some sales), it is not much of a surprise that they have outsold the higher priced HD DVD standalone players. Toshiba recently announced that they have sold 150,000 HD DVD standalone players in the US. This would bring the total amount of HD DVD players in the US to approximately 305,000.

The amount of Blu-ray standalone players sold in the US has been estimated at 100,000. The PS3, which has a Blu-ray drive embedded directly within the console, has sold approximately 1 million units in the US. The HD DVD group has claimed that only 30% of PS3’s are connected to an HDTV, which would bring the effective PS3 Blu-ray player numbers to approximately 300,000. If this 30% claim is valid, it means that there are approximately 400,000 effective Blu-ray players in the US compared to the 305,000 effective HD DVD players. This ratio could easily further increase in Blu-ray’s favor as current PS3 owners with standard TV’s upgrade to HDTV’s.

Even if the estimations above are incorrect, the number of “players” sold on either blue laser format can still be considered quite low. This format war still has a long way to go and there may not ever be a clear winner if both formats sell enough players. The 2007 holiday season will be a crucial time for both HD DVD and Blu-ray as the battle continues to unfold. CNet UK news found via CDRLabs.

Blu-ray Disc Rot video
Users on the AVSForum have reported that some Blu-ray movie discs are corroding into expensive pieces of unusable plastic. The term “disc rot” is being thrown around due to the presence of a speckling of dots found on the recording side of the damaged discs. The Blu-ray Disc title “The Prestige” has been the most reported movie experiencing this issue.

Here is a video on YouTube that shows off some of the photos and movie titles that have been mentioned and shown in the AVS thread. Please forgive the anti-Blu-ray and anti-Sony comments at the end of the video, the YouTube video author slipped those in.

Fortunately, the problem appears to be isolated to a very small number of discs. Only a few users have reported the problem and it was likely caused by a bad batch of materials, poor quality control, or a combination of both at the disc replication facility. TheDigitalBits contacted Buena Vista Home Entertainment (distributor of The Prestige), who issued the following statement about the issue.

“We encourage customers that are experiencing any kind of problem with The Prestige Blu-ray disc to call our Consumer Relations hotline at 800/477-2811. It is important to conduct forensic examinations of the affected discs in order to rule out any form of external tampering. Our customers are first and foremost and Buena Vista Home Entertainment always strives to meet the highest standards for the consumer.”

BD+ (plus) Blu-ray Disc protection now available
BD+ Technologies LLC has recently announced that their BD+ content protection system is now available for implementation on Blu-ray Disc titles. BD+ will provide yet another layer of “protection” to the Blu-ray Disc format, in addition to AACS (Advanced Access Control System) and ROM-Mark. DailyTech also covered the release and provided the following information.

“Issued by BD+ Technologies are system specifications, key management rules, test specifications and various agreements. Also launched are a key issuing center, testing centers for players, and testing facilities for disc playability.”

“BD+ differs from AACS in its complexity. Effectively an embedded virtual machine inside player hardware, BD+ allows content providers to include executables on Blu-ray Discs to perform specific, content protecting functions. For example, the BD+ virtual machine could run diagnostics on the host environment to see if the disc player has been modified, or to verify that the keys have not been changed.”

Protection from the consumer or the pirate?

From looking at the history of DRM, we can see that content protection systems rarely thwart the efforts of pirates. I predict that we will still see copies of BD+ protected Blu-ray movies appearing on Bit Torrent trackers and news groups in the near future. Of course, this will only occur if the highly talented online community is able to develop methods to circumvent or disable BD+, but they are a highly talented bunch who is ready to take a crack at this difficult battle.

Ouch that hurts! says the Blu-ray consumer

So if all of this content protection is not going to stop the pirates, what will it do? For one, it raises the price of every Blu-ray Disc title that uses the technology, as the movie studios must pay licensing fees and other charges in order to implement the “protection”. This price is passed on to the consumer in one way or another.

Additionally, it will limit the content manipulation options of legitimate consumers. BD+ could effectively prevent you from making any backup copies or transfers of your legally purchased Blu-ray media. A feature named “managed copy” could allow for some manipulation, but we’ll have to wait and see how well (or bad) that turns out. Either way, the BD+ technology is an anti-consumer “feature”, that will pass even more costs onto Blu-ray customers.

Compatibility issues with BD+ Discs and current Blu-ray players could also arise, as past history has demonstrated that new content protection mechanisms can easily throw off playback functionality. For now, much of this is speculative and we will have to wait for BD+ Blu-ray protected discs to hit the market before drawing any final conclusions.

HD DVD group shrugs off Blockbuster announcement

Ken Graffeo, the head of Universal Studios High Definition marketing, recently spoke at a press event in London. Ken believes that the Blockbuster announcement to carry Blu-ray movies exclusively in most of its’ brick and mortar stores is insignificant.
“Graffeo pointed out that rental counted for less than one percent of its revenue and brushed it off as an insignificant event in the format war.

Ken cited the fact that HD DVD is still being offered in the original 250 stores and through Blockbuster’s online rental service. He claims that those 250 stores are stores where there are large numbers of early adopters and the latter, he believes, is Blockbuster’s major growth market.”

Is that the only response you’ve got?

Ken Graffeo is also the Co-President of the HD DVD Promotions Group, so he can easily be seen as the spokes-person for the entire HD DVD format as a whole. With only this minor statement, days after the Blockbuster announcement, I have to wonder what the HD DVD “Promotions” groups is doing most of the time?

To be honest, I feel that this is a pretty weak response from the HD DVD camp. Blockbuster has a huge presence in the US and their decision to carry Blu-ray Disc titles in 1,450 stores really hurts the HD DVD “promotions”. Some Blu-ray supporters and sponsoring companies are crying “We win” (again) after the Blockbuster announcement, but the format war has a long way to go before there is a clear winner (if any). Source: Bit-Tech via HighDefDigest.