JANUARY 04, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Sony Corp.’s home entertainment unit has named the first 20 movies it intends to launch on Blu-ray Disc, the high-definition video disc format backed by Sony and several other major consumer electronics manufacturers.
The announcement was made to coincide with the start of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vega, where plans for the commercialization of the format are expected to be announced.
“We want everyone to know that there will be plenty of software content [for the launch of Blu-ray Disc],” said Ben Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, in a telephone interview.
Sony’s first movies on Blu-Ray will include:
The Fifth Element, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Desperado, For a Few Dollars More, The Guns of Navarone, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight’s Tale, Kung Fu Hustle, The Last Waltz, Legends of the Fall, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Robocop, Sense and Sensibility, Stealth, Species, SWAT, XXX, Black Hawk Down and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The discs will be launched to coincide with the availability of home players, Feingold said. Major consumer electronics brands are expected to disclose their launch schedule later in the week.
The retail price of the discs wasn’t disclosed; Feingold said pricing will be announced in the next couple of weeks. He said the discs will have higher price tags than existing DVDs but they won’t be a lot more expensive.
“I think people will be happy” with the pricing, he said.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula will be released with multichannel uncompressed audio, and both Black Hawk Down and The Bridge on the River Kwai will be released on dual-layer 50GB discs, said Feingold.
Content makers have a choice of three video compression systems to choose from on Blu-ray Disc, including MPEG2, which is used on current DVDs, and the newer VC1 and MPEG4 AVC formats. Sony will employ the MPEG2 system because it can provide a better picture, said Feingold.
“The new codecs are interesting but unproven,” he said.
In the middle of the year, the company plans to add Java-based games to its discs. At that time, new releases should be coming out at a rate of about four titles per month, and that number should rise to 10 titles per month during the fourth quarter.
Blu-ray Disc is backed by a group of major consumer electronics manufacturers that includes Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. It will compete against the HD-DVD format, which is backed by the DVD Forum and companies such as Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
The first HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc players are expected in stores during the first half of this year.
Provided By ComputerWorld.com
January 6th, 2006
Las Vegas (NV) - In what may be one of the more stunning revelations of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, representatives of manufacturers of Blu-ray disc players and equipment - who did not wish to be quoted - told TG Daily that the first generation of Blu-ray high-definition disc players, to be made available soon, probably will not have full on-screen interactivity features after all.
The interactive layer - the component which Blu-ray proponents say makes it competitive with rival format HD DVD - is supplied by Blu-ray Java, or BD-J, an interpreted protocol created by Sun Microsystems. But since the Java interpreters are apparently not yet ready to be implemented in hardware, some manufacturers will apparently release “basic” or “plain” or “player-only” Blu-ray players in advance of BD-J. The watch-word for Blu-ray players with full BD-J capabilities - and with other features the basic players may to omit, such as recording capability - is full-profile.
Yesterday in a press conference, Philips Consumer Electronics President Rudy Provoost told reporters that BD-J interactive content was being interwoven with the main movie content to such a degree that, over time, the viewer would not be able to tell the difference between them. In a presentation today, TG Daily was shown a prototype Blu-ray service connection that allows consumers to pull up movies on-demand by browsing menus consisting of their lead actors’ faces. If today’s revelations turn out to be true, at least the very first Blu-ray models may omit all that browsing, demanding, and interweaving altogether.
Also left out of the first-edition players will be the capability for them to connect to the Internet and download streaming media, for distribution throughout the home. This capability, we’re told, also requires BD-J to be present. News of this omission, in a sense, is also news of this feature’s inevitable inclusion. Apparently, one of the bonuses consumers will receive for purchasing full-profile players will be a connection to an Internet-based streaming download service. Previously, we’d reported that the Internet connection served as an authorization channel, and as a key facilitator of both Blu-ray’s and HD DVD’s copy protection and digital rights management scheme, AACS. The streaming service may serve as incentive for consumers to connect to the Internet in the first place, to allow their media consumption habits to be “managed.”
Presumably, the streaming service may create new avenues for the delivery of high-definition content to consumers, including the ability for them to simply press their own movies and pay for them automatically. But the interactivity layer will need to be present in order for such services to be utilized by consumers. This leads to another question: Is BD-J as ready for prime time as we were led to believe?
READ MORE
January 6th, 2006
Independent film producer and distributor Lionsgate (LGF:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer’s Take) announced its first slate of high-definition DVD releases using the much heralded Blu-ray format.
The company’s first 10 releases on the next-generation hardware will hit retail this coming spring, and will include recent titles such as Lord of War, The Punisher and Saw along with catalog selections including T2: Judgment Day and Reservoir Dogs.
READ MORE
January 6th, 2006
The list of movie studios, retailers, and computer companies lining up behind the HD-DVD and Blu-ray camps is impressive, but attendees at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week indicated these endorsements don’t necessarily translate into a pledge of allegiance to either emerging DVD format.
An Amazon.com executive who showed up at an HD-DVD industry group press event on Wednesday to express support said the online retailer has no qualms about selling Blu-ray players and DVDs.
“We will sell anything customers want: HD-DVD or Blu-ray,” said Greg Hart, director of music, DVD, software, and video games at Amazon.com, after the HD-DVD event at the Wynn hotel.
The event featured trailers from upcoming movies such as Mission Impossible 3 in the HD-DVD format, and it followed Bill Gates’ keynote speech Wednesday at CES (see Xbox Paired with HD DVD Drive).
Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for the HD-DVD players that Toshiba unveiled Wednesday.
That makes sense. The battle to be the dominant player in the next-generation DVD market—from DVD players to computer DVD drives to DVDs themselves—is far from over. Regardless of who is backing which format, the one group that will decide the battle hasn’t voted yet: consumers.
Online retailers such as Amazon.com and BestBuy.com are selling Toshiba’s HD-DVD players now. But there is no reason why they wouldn’t carry, for example, Samsung’s Blu-ray DVD players as well.
READ MORE
January 5th, 2006
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) — Sony Corp., the world’s second-biggest consumer electronics maker, will begin selling Blu-ray disc players this “summer'’ in the U.S., about three months after Toshiba Corp. will unveil its own high-definition player.
Prices for the Blu-ray players weren’t disclosed at a presentation in Las Vegas, where the Consumer Electronics Show starts later today. Toshiba, Japan’s fourth-biggest maker of electronics, will sell its models for about $500 and $800 from March, spokesman Mark Knox said in an interview.
Sony and Toshiba are gathering support for their formats from computer makers and movie studios to try to dominate the $26 billion U.S. market for DVDs and players. Higher sales of larger flat-panel TVs are driving demand for high-definition video content that provides better picture quality and stores more data than standard discs.
“Blu-ray disc technology is the final piece needed to complete our vision of the high-definition world,'’ said Dick Komiyama, chief operating officer at Sony’s U.S. unit.
The battle for the high-definition market is a repeat of the competition between Video Home System (VHS) and Sony’s Betamax formats for video-cassette recorders in the 1980s.
Among electronics makers, the Blu-ray format is supported by Samsung Electronics Co., Cupertino, California-based Apple Computer Inc. and Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Inc. Toshiba’s main backers include Japan’s NEC Corp., Santa Clara, California- based Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Washington.
Vaio Computers, Xbox Consoles
About 20 titles from the Sony Picture Home Entertainment movie studio will be available for launch on the Blu-ray format, said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of the U.S. home products division.
Toshiba will showcase its HD DVD players at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show with 40 movie titles, including Time Warner Inc.’s “Batman Begins,'’ Viacom Inc.’s “Sahara,'’ and “Jarhead'’ from Universal Pictures, Knox said.
READ MORE
January 5th, 2006
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Content is king. This long-held observation has often been cited by those who believe content availability could tip the scales in a format war. The most recent spate of content-related announcements from backers of Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD–the formats competing for the throne currently occupied by DVD–appear to shift the balance between the two camps–at least, for the moment.
This time out, the newsmakers are Warner Bros. Entertainment and Hewlett-Packard. And, as with the developments I reported on last month (from Intel and Microsoft, and from Paramount), there’s more to these announcements than initially meets the eye.
Warner Joins Team Blu-ray
The availability of content is a critical factor in determining which of the formats in this protracted war has the best chance of survival. Assuming equal pricing and availability of hardware, if more content is available for one format over the other, the format with the larger selection of content will have the edge. Likewise, the format most likely to prevail is the one that requires us as consumers to sacrifice as little as possible; for example, the format that lets us have all of our favorite films, regardless of which studio distributes them.
With Warner’s mid-October proclamation that it would join the Blu-ray Disc Association, Blu-ray gained an edge over HD-DVD. Warner says it will release both current and catalog content in the Blu-ray format as well as the HD-DVD format, if both go to market.
Warner’s announcement means that five out of the six major studios are supporting Blu-ray–Paramount, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Company, and Warner–or 80 percent of the market. That’s in addition to ESPN, Miramax, MGM (which announced its support earlier this month), Lions Gate Entertainment, and Touchstone; gaming giant Electronic Arts; and music powerhouses Sony BMG and Universal Music Group. In short, quite a spate of content providers have lined up now behind Blu-ray Disc–far more than HD-DVD has gathered at this juncture.
Like Paramount before it, Warner is covering its bases by making sure the company is positioned well, regardless of which format wins out. The harsh realities of a dual-format marketplace prompted Warner’s switch from being a staunch supporter of HD-DVD to straddling the line between formats.
Hedging Bets
Warner’s motive was simple. Says Jim Cardwell, president of Warner’s home video arm, “We realized recently that it was likely that both formats would go to market–and we didn’t want consumers not to have access to our movies. We wanted to make sure all consumers with high-definition players could watch [our] high-definition movies.”
However, Warner still had concerns about Blu-ray–namely, the cost of replicating discs. So the company tabled a proposition to the Blu-ray Disc Association.
“We knew Blu-ray was close to finalizing its specification,” explains Cardwell, “and we wanted certain things in the specification. It reached a point in time where we didn’t want the ship to sail and miss the opportunity. We felt we could more effectively lobby for those functionalities if we were members of the Blu-ray Disc Association.”
Given some of Warner’s previous concerns about Blu-ray (which I wrote about in my August interview with Steve Nickerson, senior vice president of market management for Warner Home Video), the additions to the Blu-ray spec that Warner sought were not surprising.
“We wanted the player to be capable of playing back a [9GB] high-definition red-laser disc, which we call BD-9,” says Cardwell. “[The disc] would have a high enough capacity for our movies, and it would have a lower cost than the [25GB] BD-25. The advantage would be lower costs to manufacture the disc, because it could be manufactured on existing [DVD production] lines. Certainly, most of our movies will fit on a BD-9. The issue will be how much enhanced content will we put on there. For basic movies, most will fit on BD-9.”
Although the Blu-ray Disc Association has not formally announced the format, Cardwell reports that it has “been proposed and accepted by the BDA.”
A Red-Laser Blu-ray Disc
The resulting disc will be encoded with a high-definition video codec, and though it will be a red-laser disc (not a blue-laser disc as used by the other formats within the Blu-ray Disc specifications), it will only play back in Blu-ray Disc players and recorders. Even though vendors will be able to manufacture the disc on existing DVD production lines, it is clearly not the same as an HD-DVD. (One of HD-DVD’s strengths is its purported ability to be produced at a low cost on existing, albeit modified, DVD production lines).
Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at IDC, agrees that using a red-laser disc could save vendors money–at least in the short term, until Blu-ray ramps up its manufacturing, which will in turn drive down costs.
“You could have cost savings if you go with red laser, because you’re working with larger [data] pits on the disc,” explains Schlichting. “The density is not as high as with blue laser. That could make it easier for [disc] mastering, which is still a challenge for Blu-ray because of its very fine structure.”
In spite of Warner’s decision to support Blu-ray, if both formats proceed to market, Cardwell stresses that Warner content will come out on both. “We’re going to target getting the software out at exactly the same time as the hardware,” he says. “We plan to put out major catalog titles and major new releases in both formats; we have not decided exactly how many titles to put out at launch.”
HP Pushes for Unity?
A format war is the one type of competition that hurts consumers. No one stands to benefit, neither the customer nor the manufacturer. That’s apparently one of many reasons that Hewlett-Packard decided to take a position that’s a bit contrary to the party line of the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which the company is a founding member.
In October HP issued a statement requesting that the Blu-ray Disc Association make two changes in its draft spec. First, that Blu-ray back what’s referred to as “mandatory managed copy”: the guaranteed ability that people who buy Blu-ray Discs be able to make legal copies of content to other devices and media. (Competitor HD-DVD has already touted this consumer-friendly capability as one of its strengths.) The second change that HP asked for was that Blu-ray Disc adopt Microsoft’s Interactive HD, or iHD, as the programming language that will govern the disc’s menu creation and other interactive capabilities.
Josh Peterson, HP’s director of strategic alliances, optical storage solutions business, noted that with this announcement the company hopes to give new life to discussions about uniting the two next-generation optical formats.
The announcement came barely weeks after the company stood alongside Dell and staunchly supported Blu-ray in the face of the above-mentioned Microsoft and Intel announcements supporting HD-DVD. The genesis of this reversal, says Peterson, was a meeting with Microsoft after the Redmond and Seattle behemoths threw their collective weight behind HD-DVD.
“We sat down with Microsoft to compare notes on the PC implementation of the various application layers,” says Peterson. “Based on that discussion and technical reviews, we decided iHD is a must, if you will, for the PC implementation of next-generation optical discs.”
The iHD Advantage
The advantages to iHD, an XML-based format developed by Microsoft, Disney, and the DVD Forum, will more clearly benefit content producers more than consumers. For content producers, iHD will be easier to use for authoring and testing discs. For consumers, iHD will be integrated into Microsoft’s Windows Vista OS, which will make playing an iHD-based disc easier than playing a disc using a different platform that would require installing third-party software.
The second key element of HP’s request was for mandatory managed copy. “We envision having high-definition content being streamed from room to room, and iHD is part of the equation that will allow that to happen. These two features together really enable the digital connected home, and we feel the value here especially from a PC perspective is unquestionable. We’d like to make the digital home centered around the PC and PC technology,” Peterson says.
“At the end of the day,” he adds, “we’re doing this for consumers. We want to allow consumers to move their HD content–including the interactive features–throughout the house, and iHD together with managed copy really enables that vision.”
Both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc groups have stated that their respective formats will use AACS (Advanced Access Content System) to protect the discs; and AACS, in its current preliminary spec, has provisions for managed copy. However, this summer Blu-ray added BD Plus and ROM Mark security features. Blu-ray reps say these features won’t hinder managed copy. However, Peterson notes, “The additional features add a level of complexity. What we’re proposing is that we make sure that those features don’t inhibit mandatory managed copy.”
The HD-DVD camp has been vociferous in its support of mandatory managed copy. Blu-ray Disc Association representative Andy Parsons did note that “BD Plus is a different layer of content protection that should not have any direct impact on that. All of the members of BDA are fully committed to the idea of managed copying. It’s just a case of getting a final copy of AACS in our hands to announce anything. It’s just a question about implementation.”
Peterson admits the method of HP’s request to Blu-ray Disc was dramatic, and the timing late–but not impossibly so. “Given the timing, we felt we had to make a bold request, so there was no question about how serious we were about these features,” says Peterson. “We won’t switch camps–that would be a pretty dramatic move–but we would support both.”
The Blu-ray Disc Association had no comment in response to HP’s very public request.
The Analysts Weigh In
Some analysts who have been following the saga have already predicted a winner. Ted Schadler, vice president at Forrester Research, released a report that proclaimed, “Blu-ray Will Win a Pyrrhic Victory Over HD-DVD.”
Schadler says he’s long believed that Blu-ray held the edge due to its superior capacity and the fact that Sony’s PlayStation 3 will play Blu-ray movie discs. “The longer the format war continues, the worse off the industry is going to be. As long as they’re battling each other, they’re not focusing on selling the benefits of the next-gen formats, and that will leave consumers even colder,” observes Schadler.
IDC’s Schlichting thinks it’s too early to declare a clear victor. “From a perception point-of-view, I think Blu-ray has made more progress, especially in Europe and the United States,” says Schlichting. “But I don’t think we’ve seen the knockout blow for HD-DVD, even though the Paramount and Warner announcements have taken quite a bit of wind out of the sails of HD-DVD.”
Schlichting believes HD-DVD will still have an edge, given that products using this format are currently slated to make it to store shelves before Blu-ray-based hardware. “I think if they are able to show a 30 percent price advantage over Blu-ray products, [HD-DVD], in my view, still has a good chance to keep their format viable,” Schlichting says.
And, as Schlichting rightly points out, none of these content deals are exclusive arrangements. “If HD-DVD could generate momentum, that would prompt other studios to consider publishing content, so I don’t think it’s a total commitment [to Blu-ray] yet,” he notes. “Ultimately, the studios will build what consumers demand. The studios are more and more just following where the market is going, and are not interested in leading the market and being kingmaker in this format war.”
And so the Blue Laser World turns. What’s next in this format soap opera? With the holiday season upon us, I suspect the next big round of announcements won’t be until the start of next year, when the annual Consumer Electronics Show descends upon Las Vegas. Stay tuned.
November 16th, 2005
The Blu-ray Disc belongs to a new generation of optical discs capable of staging high density data. Blu-Ray technology is based on a blue-violet coloured laser.
The blue laser operates at a wave length of 405 nm, while older technology such as DVDs and CDs are based on red and infrared lasers that works at 650 and 780 nm. Since the wave length is shorter with a blue laser, the new Blu-ray technology makes is possible to store much more information
The advantage with the Blu-ray technology is that the laser beam can be focused much more tightly at the surface of the disc. Tight focus means that a smaller spot will be produced on the surface on the disc, and when the spots become smaller there will naturally be room for more information on each disc. The minimum spot size of any laser depends on a naturally accruing phenomenon called diffraction. The narrow beam of light sent out from a laser will always diverge into a wider beam eventually, due to the natural diffraction of waves. Diffraction will also occur the waves meet an obstruction. By reducing the wavelength of a laser, we can affect the diffraction.
In Blu-ray technology, the diffractions is also affected by the fact that the lens used to focus the light has a higher numerical aperture than the lenses found in ordinary DVDs - 0.85 instead of 0.6. Blu-ray technology based appliances are also equipped with a dual-lens system of supreme quality, and the cover layer has been made thinner in order to prevent unwanted optical effects. All this makes it possible for a Blu-ray laser to focus on much smaller spots. The optical improvements are accompanied with a new method for encoding data which makes it possible to store even more data on the Blu-ray disc.
The standard for Blu-ray technology has been developed as a joint venture between several major manufacturers of PCs and consumer electronics, including Sony and Philips. The group is called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). The first Blu-ray recorder was launched in Japan in 2003, by Sony. Today, Samsung, JVC, Matsushita (Panasonic) and LG Electronics are all examples of companies using Blu-ray technology in their products. Hewlett Packard has announced that they will release desktop PCs equipped with Blu-ray technology in late 2005.
READ MORE
November 16th, 2005
Toshiba signed a deal last week with Chinese hardware producers to embed the HD DVD technology in various devices that will be launched on the market next year. Toshiba’s move will probably not outrun Blu-Ray’s popularity because Sony will embed in every PlayStation 3 gaming console the capability to read these discs.
It is estimated that Sony PlayStation 3 will be launched on the market with a price between US$300 and US$400, sales for 2006 reaching up to 20 million units. So we can say that Sony will launch a subsidized Blu-Ray Player.
Big studios like Warner and Paramount joined Sony and when over 20 million of the so called Blu-Ray players will be on the market, companies will have to launch products for this kind of media.
READ MORE
November 16th, 2005
Post the launch of Blu-ray hardware in Europe, North America and Japan, MGM in co-operation with the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), will release film and television titles from its vast library.
Blu-ray is a Gen-X optical disc format, developed for high-capacity software applications and high-definition video. While a single-layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 25 gigabytes of data, a dual-layer Blu-ray disc can hold around 50 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray also incorporates highly advanced copy protection, advanced interactivity, and backward compatibility with current DVD format connectivity.
Harry Sloan, chairman and CEO, MGM Studios, said, “MGM’s focus has always been to provide movie lovers complete access to the world’s largest modern film library, in the most technologically advanced formats. Adopting this new Blu-ray technology, with its expanded storage capacity and increased interactive capabilities, allows us to continue to provide our customers with the best movie viewing experience available.”
Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO, Sony Corporation, said, “This is a tremendous win for movie lovers everywhere. The Blu-ray Disc format provides a completely new viewing experience, and consumers can now look forward to enjoying content from the world’s largest library of modern films, including titles from franchises such as James Bond and The Pink Panther in this amazing new format.”
Contributing Site
November 10th, 2005
DENVER, COLORADO - MPEG LA, LLC, world leader in one-stop technology standards patent licensing, issued a call for patents and patent applications that are essential to the Blu-ray Standard.
“MPEG LA is pleased to assist in bringing together the essential patent holders at the advent of this important new technology in order to assist users with its efficient adoption in devices, discs and related implementations,” said MPEG LA Chief Executive Officer Baryn S. Futa.
According to a press release by MPEG LA, the call begins a process of evaluating and determining patents that are essential to the standard in order to include them in a joint patent portfolio license providing users with fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to the technology as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses
Contributing Site
November 10th, 2005
Previous Posts
