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Xperinet announces Blu-ray support

In some interesting news not quite as important at the Paramount/DreamWorks announcement, Xperinet has fully backed the Blu-ray Disc format. Previously, Xperinet had announced they were working on both Blu-ray and HD DVD support, but today they have announced they fully support Blu-ray.

“Xperinet’s leadership position in media servers for this industry strikes an important win for the Blu-ray camp,” said Aaron Chisena, Director of US Sales for Xperinet, perhaps hyping the company’s market position a bit. “HD content is essential for revealing the capabilities of today’s 1080p displays, and no one wants to search through disks any more to find a movie.”



I previously reported that Xperinet would offer USB drives for both HD DVD and Blu-ray, and this appears to place the company firmly in the Blu-ray family. The press release even starts saying, “In yet another coup de grace for the fading HD DVD camp, Blu-ray Disc has succeeded in wooing Xperinet, Inc.” They go on to say their media servers and delivery clients will solidify “the format’s dominance over HD DVD in the marketplace.”

Scheduled to appear at CEDIA Expo next week, the Blu-ray enabled systems will ship in October, and the USB upgrade kit will be available for existing MIRV servers in homes. The media servers will include a BD-ROM drive for loading 1080p content in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4/H.264. No word on if the VC-1 encoded films (like The Prestige and Deja Vu) will be supported.

Xperinet does get to claim the title of first custom electronics integration company to throw their weight (caveat: not a lot of weigh) behind Blu-ray.

Amazon offers HD DVD & Blu-ray specials

Amazon.com, the nation’s largest online retailer, is now offering multiple promotions on HD DVD and Blu-ray products.

The HD DVD deals include buy 2 titles, get 1 free. Buy a Toshiba HD DVD standalone player and get 8 free HD DVD’s. And last but not least, buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-on and get 8 free HD DVD’s.

Blu-ray deals are very similar, with a buy 2 titles get 1 free promotion. In addition, if you purchase a PS3 gaming console (which has an embedded Blu-ray player), you can get 8 free Blu-ray Disc titles.

Click on the images below to access the buy 2 discs get 1 free offers or the buy a player and get 8 free movies offers.

With these enticing offers, I couldn’t resist. I ordered up 3 high def movie titles for the price of 2. But these prices won’t last and quantities are limited, so order now while they have the titles in stock that you want.

UPDATE: It looks like the buy 2 get 1 free offers have been removed from the Amazon website. From checking the site, it appears that the only special offers still available are the buy a PS3 and get 8 free Blu-ray Discs and buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-on and get 8 free HD DVD’s.

First “generic” HD DVD player announced

HD DVD supporters have certainly had a good week, and this week they’re greeted with an announcement from Venturer Electronics about their upcoming HD DVD player. The SHD7000 will be available to the North American market “in time for 2007 holiday sales” in national retailers.

The Venturer player will meet the minimum specifications for HD DVD, including Dolby TrueHD support, ethernet jack, and DVD/CD playback. Additionally, it comes with an HDMI jack with 1080i output. There is no word on if the player will send bitstream audio over HDMI or if it has 5.1 analog outputs.

Venturer isn’t a household name, but they import product from cheap Chinese factories, badge them under several brand names (second-tier, of course). The player is expected to at least match the low cost of the cheapest Toshiba player, if not beat that price ($299 USD). Speculation is Wal-Mart will be carrying this player.

I can’t speak of the quality of the player, but this may end up being a strength for HD DVD. If only the average consumer would learn the difference between HDTV and DVD we might be able to get the high-def market to accelerate.

UPDATE: Venturer has confirmed on email to WesleyTech that “The US retail price will be $199.99″. High resolutions photos or additional details on the player specifications were unavailable at this time.

Update: Paramount CTO explains decision

Published today on PC World is an interview with Alan Bell, the CTO of Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment. Bell explains why Paramount and DreamWorks Animation decided to drop Blu-ray support. It is basically described the same as Blockbuster’s decision. They gave both formats a year and decided HD DVD was the future. The difference is that Blockbuster sided with the format that the consumer was renting more, and Paramount with the format that was selling less. Paramount’s own titles were selling over twice the number on Blu-ray as they were on HD DVD.

Why would a studio chose the format that only had 32% of their high-def business? Bell says it was a technical decision they made after they had a year of development experience. “When you look at what the DVD Forum has specified as required, it’s a good set of advanced technologies. You can be assured that that benefit will be available to all consumers, no matter what [player] model they purchased. That speaks to the DVD Forum, that it published specs that were complete and market-ready, and that it didn’t need to publish up [and change the specs], as Blu-ray has. To some degree, [such changes are] going to create some legacy issues.”

Mr. Bell makes a case very similar to that expressed by Universal Studios President Craig Kornblau. Interactivity on HD DVD is more mature than BD-Java, and the Toshiba players are cheaper than the Blu-ray offerings. He cited a few other reasons including “manufacturability, the reliability of players, the cost, the infrastructure that’s developed to support our creation of titles.”

I hope for Paramount’s sake that they chose the right path. I’ve been hearing some rumors about certain directors, producers and studio executives upset with the decision. None of these rumors have been substantiated by a legitimate source so I don’t know if there is anything to them. I think the company that benefits most (initially) from this decision is Samsung, with their upcoming dual-format player. We’ll see about that in a couple months.

Update: Paramount’s HD DVD decision
A lot has happened since yesterday with a flurry of press releases and statements from almost everyone involved in the format war. The New York Times reported Paramount is “focusing on one format” to provide “better content because we’re not splitting our attention.” Paramount’s president, Rob Moore, also said, “HD DVD is simply less expensive.”

There had been some reports from The Digital Bits and LA Weekly about $150-million in payouts to Paramount and DreamWorks Animation that I purposefully failed to report as it was, at the time, all but rumor. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal basically confirmed the payments from two Viacom executives and Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks. The New York Times article also says Microsoft “could not rule out payment but said it wrote no checks.”

Just when I thought the format war was getting pretty boring, Paramount went and made it all exciting again. Paramount (Viacom) is the second largest studio in Hollywood only trailing Warner Bros. (Time Warner) in market share. While Paramount and DreamWorks only make up less than 12% of the total Blu-ray Disc sales, the upcoming releases of the summer’s top blockbusters, including Transformers and Shrek the Third will certainly bring more attention to HD DVD. Shrek is the 2nd highest grossing film of the year only behind Spider-Man 3 (a Blu-ray exclusive). Transformers is in fourth place directly behind another Blu-ray exclusive, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Concerning the exclusive release of Transformers, director Michael Bay is apparently “pissed” at Paramount, posting on his personal blog, “I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!” He is so angry he concluded, “No Transformers 2 for me!” What may come of the Bay-Paramount partnership is yet to be seen, but it throws another interesting element into the fray.

Paramount/DreamWorks may be committed to the HD DVD format for now, but the New York Times article also states that the agreement is for 18 months, and no Steven Speilberg directed films are included. Speilberg is co-founder of DreamWorks. In an interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Paramount CEO Rob Moore said Speilberg is a “huge supporter of Blu-ray” and any of his films (including Indiana Jones) would have to be a dual format release. (Edit: This morning, High Def Digest published an exclusive confirming Speilberg is a “big supporter” of Blu-ray.)

The Blu-ray response has been immediate and punctuated. Blu-ray Disc Association Chairman Andy Parsons, of Pioneer, issued a statement indicating shock. “The decision seems oddly timed given Blu-ray’s tremendous momentum,” he said. The BDA is made up of several companies including Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony and Samsung. Mr. Parsons goes on to say the “price delta” between HD DVD and Blu-ray is shrinking and a trend is “on its way to eliminating any perceived cost advantage the HD DVD format has claimed to have.” He goes on to hint at the reported payoff. I feel the statement was a little harsh towards an ally you’re trying to win back.

Fox President Mike Dunn took the opportunity to boast about the Blu-ray software sales saying, “Blu-ray has consistently outsold HD DVD all year, and this is the case for any titles released by any studio in both formats.” Disney also came out yesterday boosting the technological achievements of Blu-ray Disc. President Bob Chapek of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment was very optimistic about the format’s future, saying the achievements made so far are “just the tip of the iceberg and we are confident that consumers will be astounded by the level of entertainment that can only be achieved by using the maximum capacity of the Blu-ray Disc format.”

As I said, things are getting exciting once more, and I’m sure there will be more developments even today, and certainly through the next few weeks. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, this is an exciting time to be a nerd. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep my ear to the ground and my eye peeled and will report relevant happenings so you can keep up to date.

Update: Michael Bay’s original post was removed from his website. He made a new post which can be read here explaining why he posted what he did.

Fox to promote BD-Live
As a response to Paramount/DreamWorks, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment fast-tracked a press release emphasizing Blu-ray’s market dominance and BD-Java features. Along with a list of 29 movies from Fox and MGM (Fox distributed MGM to the home video market), Fox has committed to leading Blu-ray in state-of-the-art features. The press release states:

Among the BD industry ‘firsts’ from the Studios’ upcoming global release slate are picture in picture capability, enhanced viewing and surround sound modes with the ability to mix and match picture and sound, direct access to in-movie features through one of the four colored buttons on the BD remote and the most technically vibrant BD-Java interactive multi-player challenge and trivia games to date. The Studios’ slate also takes full advantage of BD-Live functionality this fourth quarter. Internet-connected consumers will enjoy unique, title specific “web-enabled” interactive features and games and “web-exclusive” downloadable content with the ability to connect and interact with other broadband BD users worldwide.

BD-Live is not currently supported by any Blu-ray player, but the Playstation 3 should allow this functionality. However, Fox’s commitment to BD-Live features may push manufacturers to include ethernet ports on future players. (The Sony BDP-S1, Pioneer BDP-HD1 and BDP-94HD have ethernet ports, so it’s possible firmware updates will enable BD-Live.)

A couple of examples given by Fox/MGM concerning next-gen features include: an “Alien Scavenger Hunt” on Independence Day that allows players to unlock bonus features by identifying the correct number of aliens in select scenes; a “Global Warming Trivia Track” on The Day After Tomorrow; and a pop-up map on Master & Commander: The Other Side of the World with historical and geographical data that tracks Capt. Aubrey and his enemies on select tracks.

Along with the press release is a strong list of exciting titles including Edward Scissorhands, The Fly, Cast Away, the Die Hard series and others. Fox has indicated that the new titles will feature MPEG-4/AVC video compression on the 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc format. I expect many will also include DTS-HD Master Audio as Fox has used on past titles.

Read the full press release: Fox and MGM Unveil Blu-Ray Exclusive Worldwide Releases for 2007

Paramount chooses HD DVD exclusively
In perhaps the most shocking development of the format war so far, Paramount Pictures has announced this morning that they will be supporting HD DVD exclusively. This includes all releases by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films and DreamWorks Animation. The agreement excludes all Steven Speilberg movies on DreamWorks. Paramount said his films are not exclusive to either format.

Paramount was originally an HD DVD exclusive studio but in October 2005 they surprised the world by announcing they would support both competing formats. This latest announcement is especially shocking considering the reports from late last week that Blu-ray has been consistently out-selling HD DVD by over 2:1 this year.

Paramount cites HD DVD’s lower-cost players and lower manufacturing costs as the determining factors. Currently the lowest priced HD DVD player is Toshiba’s HD-A2 at $299 MSRP.

The first HD DVD exclusive Paramount release should be Blades of Glory on August 28. The summer blockbusters Transformers and Shrek the Third are also scheduled to be exclusive.

This is a stunning development that nobody could have predicted. The implications are broad as it seemed all the positive news for Blu-ray pointed to a swift decision in this war, if not this holiday season perhaps the next. Paramount’s exclusive agreement will certainly prolong this war.

We will certainly be watching this closely and will let you know any new developments as soon as they arrive.

Edit: Read the press release from Viacom here: Paramount and DreamWorks Animation Each Declare Exclusive Support for HD DVD