Uni promises all HD DVD titles will connect
HOME MEDIA EXPO: Some protest the studio's HD DVD-only stance
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 7/18/2007
JULY 18 | LAS VEGAS—Universal Studios Home Entertainment is adamant about exclusively offering HD DVD titles, despite protests by enthusiasts during the Home Media Expo here that the studio should work to end the high-definition format war.
Starting with the first season release of Heroes on HD DVD on Aug. 28, all new releases in the format from Universal will contain Web-enabled features. The interactivity is intended to underscore HD DVD advantages over Blu-ray Disc, whose studio backers have not yet started offering Web-enabled Blu-ray titles. Most available Blu-ray players do not feature Internet connectivity.
With Heroes, consumers who buy the HD DVD will be immersed in the show’s official Web site, but officials declined to share details, which will be publicly announced during an NBC-Universal session at Comic-Con in San Diego, Calif., later this month.
“We are targeting the MySpace generation,” said Ken Graffeo, Universal executive VP of marketing and head of high-definition. “We are developing that same community. With Heroes, producer Tim Kring is very involved in letting HD DVD users exclusively participate in the Heroes community.”
Blu-ray players “don’t have the consistency in their machines to be able to handle this,” Graffeo added.
During a Wednesday session for Home Theater Forum members, Microsoft HD DVD evangelist Kevin Collins gave Home Theater Forum members the first public look at Heroes scenes and showed off some included picture-in-picture interactivity, another feature not yet offered on Blu-ray discs.
During a Q&A session with Collins later in the day, HTF members seemed grateful to hear about the format’s plans. But many still seemed angry over Universal’s HD DVD-only decision.
“I have Blu-ray. When are you going to go Blu-ray?” asked exasperated HTF member Dan Deganis, who recently purchased a Blu-ray-capable PlayStation 3.
Graffeo, Collins and other panelists acknowledged that PS3 owners far outweigh HD DVD player owners. But they argued that Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard are soon releasing a slew of HD DVD drives for notebooks and PCs.
“I don’t watch movies on my computer,” shot back Deganis, which was met with cheers from the audience.
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt told the panelists about a family friend who bought a Toshiba player quickly after the company reduced prices to $299. The machine was just as quickly returned to the store after the friend’s wife mistakenly bought Blu-ray titles Ice Age and Pirates of the Caribbean, not realizing they were incompatible with the new player.
“The average consumer is just sitting out on the sidelines,” said Hunt, adding that a lot of people are enjoying the advanced quality on upscaling DVD players, not feeling it’s necessary to also buy true high-def players. “How can this ever be a mass market?”
Digital Bits Web site founder Bill Hunt and HTF members also questioned Universal’s and Microsoft’s stance that interactivity gives HD DVD a serious leg up over Blu-ray.
With picture-in-picture, HTF’s Sam Posten bemoaned the complexity, saying “I can’t even explain this stuff to my mom. It makes it harder to get to the actual [film] feature. Who is going to sit through a movie three times to hopefully see a bug in the corner of the screen?”
Hunt chimed in, “And who is to say that a year from now, Blu-ray won’t be able to add these things anyway?”
Graffeo consistently defended Universal’s position, pointing out that outside of the U.S., HD DVD is far more pervasive than Blu-ray. Some Blu-ray studios do not have the international distribution rights to titles, which then are delivered by indie companies to non-U.S. retailers. Many of these indies, including Studio Canal, are choosing to produce in the cheaper-to-replicate HD DVD format.
“In Europe, 80% of the high-def content is HD vs. Blu-ray,” said Graffeo. “We need to look at this business on a global basis.”
