Consumer Electronics Show "HD DVD" Madness

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/ywqohc

HD DVD continued to emphasize the importance of their partnerships with Warner Brothers, Paramount, Microsoft and Intel. But this press conference was more about new alliances. HD DVD signed on several hardware manufacturers to manufacture HD DVD players: Onkyo(Japan), Alco(China), and Shinco(China) will help expand the HD DVD player line in hopes to match the amount of makers on the Blu Ray camp, such as Philips, Pioneer and Samsung—clearly bigger names. Meridien, a well known company that makes high-end digital video and audio devices, has also boarded the HD DVD train.

In set-tops, Toshiba is already starting to ship the HD-XA2 and the HD-A2, the current generation HD DVD players. Toshiba just announced the HD-A20, which ships in spring 2007. Two days ago, they announced the first HD DVD writer for desktops. As you may recall, the first HD DVD-ROM did not have burning capabilities, whereas Blu-Ray did. Later on in the year, Toshiba will announce slim drive HD DVD writers for laptops. They plan to expand storage capacity from 15GB to 17GB, still far less than the 50-GB dual layer discs Blu-Ray currently has in the market.

HD DVD also announced a partnership with Broadcom, a leading provider of wireless chipsets, to work on their reference designs.

In terms of content, HD DVD has received international support from Bandai, one of the largest animation companies in the world; Studio Canal, a French-based production with the third-largest film library in the world; Pathe, a French movie company; and HDnet, founded by Dallas Maverick's owner, Mark Cuban.

All in all, however, execs professed themselves satisfied with the format's progress, and its efforts to compete against the rival Blu-Ray format. HD DVD has released 250 movies worldwide, and they expect to release 300 more in the year 2007, executives said. Some of the planned new releases in 2007 include Happy Feet, The Departed, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. They plan to re-master older flicks, too, like the Matrix trilogy, ScarFace, and the original Star Trek series. Best of all, a growing percentage of these titles are combo discs, easing the transition between HD DVD and DVD formats.

And yes, people are buying HD DVD movies. HD DVD annualized it to 28 movies per player bought this year. The 2007 forecast, based on annualized attached rates, should reach over 600 million dollars by the end of the year, according to the group.

One of the biggest improvements that HD DVD has over Blu Ray is the interactive content on their discs, the group claimed. Take King Kong, Superman Returns, MI:3, and The Fast and the Furious(Tokyo Drift) for example: the "Extras" on the disc feature black and white storyboards and in-depth commentaries from the actors and producers. In Tokyo Drift, they actually embedded a virtual GPS device that mapped out the exact location of the speed chases in Japan.

HD DVD is also touting their online community, where you can create bookmarks of your favorite movie scenes and share them with people in that community. For example, you can select your favorite scenes from a movie, access the HD DVD "online community", and have someone from the community download those scenes directly into their HD DVD player. Memory will be built-in to these set top players so you can save these bookmarks.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

For me when it comes to classic Star Trek all reason goes out the window.

I don't care which format it is I will buy them as long as the transfer is great. I have high hopes that it will be because the DVD's look fantastic, which would seem to imply the film is well preserved. And of the course the people doing the transfers know what they are doing.

Anyway a new look at these old classics would be quite a treat for me. I hope they really work on mastering the soundtrack as well as the video.