Warner sets Total HD for second half

FROM CES: Best Buy, Trans World, Amazon show support

By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 1/10/2007

JAN. 10 | LAS VEGAS—Warner Home Video plans to begin debuting all of its high-definition movies on its new Total Hi Def (Total HD) format in the second half of the year and hopes to convince other studios to do the same in a bid to end consumer hesitancy in buying high-def DVD, studio execs said at a Tuesday evening press gathering at CES, where they officially unveiled the new dual-format disc.

News of the disc, which will have an HD DVD version of a movie on one side and a Blu-ray version on the flip, broke last week, but the studio was short on details at the time.

At the Tuesday gathering, Warner execs gave more details as they stood before a theater-sized screen interspersed with high-definition Warner film clips and flashing red and blue graphics representing HD DVD and Blu-ray and the slogan “one world, one disc.”

Total HD is meant to end consumer confusion and hesitancy on buying either high-definition format, Warner Bros. Entertainment chair and CEO Barry Meyer said as he introduced the new format. The industry is in “vital need of a solution,” he said. “We think we have it.”

Warner’s companies HBO Video and New Line Home Entertainment also will debut their films on the format. Other studios have yet to sign on.

Warner has talked to Paramount about Total HD and plans to talk to other studios to get industry support for the disc, Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders said after the presentation. The hope is that Total HD will convince Blu-ray-only studios, such as Disney and 20th Century Fox, and HD DVD-only Universal Studios to support both formats.

Sanders said it could become more difficult for studios to justify sticking to one format in the coming year with sales on each growing.

More than 9 million high-definition DVD devices, including game systems, are expected to be in homes this year, and “consumers are hungry for high-definition movies in both formats,” Sanders said. Warner estimates software sales will total $1 billion, with $600 million of that expected to come from HD DVD software sales.

Warner is projecting that revenue from Blu-ray software sales will reach just $400 million in 2007, even though the format will have 6.2 million players in the market. However, the majority of those will be PlayStation 3 game consoles, and Sanders said the studio has found that most units are being used for gaming.

Warner said being in both formats has benefited them in sales and given the studio a disproportionate 37% share of the total high-definition DVD market, topping all other studios.

Warner said Total HD discs can be made on single-layer or dual-layer versions, holding up to 30GB on the HD DVD side and 50GB on the Blu-ray side. Studios using the technology would pay licensing fees for Blu-ray and HD DVD but not for Total HD, the studio said.

“We don’t view this as technology; we view this as a solution,” Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group president Kevin Tsujihara said.

Execs said they haven’t yet determined pricing for the discs, but Sanders said he doesn’t expect it to cost more than other hybrid discs. He said it doesn’t cost “materially” more to produce the hybrid disc than what the studio is now spending to make HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of each movie.

The studio believes putting movies out on Total HD will make consumers more comfortable buying either format. Execs said it also is convenient for households that may have a PS3 in one room and an HD DVD player in another, as they could watch the same disc on either player.

“We can’t change the fact that currently a multi-format marketplace is there, but we can offer a solution,” Sanders said, adding that Total HD offers “all of the content with none of the risk.”

Warner surveyed consumers about Total HD and found that 49% said they’d be more likely to buy a high-definition DVD player if Total HD was available.

“It will sell more hardware,” Tsujihara said.

WHV senior VP of market management Steve Nickerson demoed a prototype disc of Superman Returns, which the studio noted several times was the top-selling high-definition DVD of the year on both HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Nickerson played a scene of Superman stopping an airplane from crashing first on an HD DVD player, then put the same disc in a Blu-ray player and then in LG’s just-announced dual-format player.

“If you take a Total HD disc and put it in a dual player, you’re not going to rearrange the universe,” he joked.

The studio said it also has received retail support, gathering quotes from Best Buy exec Gary Arnold, who called Total HD a “viable solution to this dispute,” and from Trans World Entertainment’s Mark Higgins, who said it’s “a creative solution to ease consumer and retailer concerns.”

“Our view is that by combining formats and enabling customers to get either [format on one disc] does remove hesitancy,” Amazon VP of movies Greg Hart said in a panel with Warner execs and replication officials during the event.

« Back | Print