Studio Canal Planning to Release Blu-ray Disc Titles?
Posted by Dave Cowl
closeAuthor: Dave Cowl
Name: Dave Cowl
Email: dave@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.blu-raystats.com
About: Originally from New Zealand, Dave now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Dave's day job
involves developing high resolution LCoS projectors.
Dave also has a strong interest in cinema and film making, and has
always been an early adopter - he still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 DVD
Player and also owns first generation Blu-ray, HD DVD and DTheater
D-VHS equipment.
Dave has been following the HD Disc format war since the beginning,
which resulted in the Blu-ray Statistics and HD DVD Statistics
websites, designed to track the studio progress with features as they
have released HD media product.See Authors Posts (353) on August 29, 2007
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Studios
European movie distributor Studio Canal has reportedly announced a box set of “Les Bronzes” in both HD formats, indicating that they are moving into format neutral territory. While this particular release is most likely of little interest to US residents, the company has a wide range of titles in its catalogue and is often quoted as a good source of HD DVDs from studios that are Blu-ray Disc exclusive in the USA. It will remain to be seen if the Blu-ray titles released by Studio Canal will feature region coding.
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This release is certainly confusing, and is as of yet unconfirmed, with a tentative release date set for Nov. 19th in France.
At least from my understanding of another site: http://www.hdnumerique.com/actualite/articles/2365-studio-canal-et-universal-s-associent-pour-la-distribution-video-francaise.html
It sounds as if they are as confused as I am. With Universal and Studio Canal forming their own European home video distribution company, Universal Studio Canal Vidéo GIE, this release would suggest that either Studio Canal was allowed to release titles on both formats, or that it was planned before the formation of the new joint distribution company between the two.
I could be wrong, as my French is a bit shoddy, and I can’t visit the DVDrama.com link (my work blocks everything).
Either way, I’m sure that things will clear up shortly.
Studio Canal was in the list of European studios in at the BDA press conference today, so it is starting to look more real.
So much for Studio Canal supporting Blu-ray.
Rodolphe Buet, Director of Marketing StudioCanal, declared to clarify the position: “StudioCanal remains an unconditional supporter of the format HD DVD. HD DVD allows us to offer incomparable levels of interactivity and explores a new economical model thanks to internet connectivity. The distribution cost of the titles HD DVD is equally more interesting thanks to the big number of studios for post-production and replication that work with this format.”
That article goes on to say that there will be one experimental release on Blu-ray Disc.
Fair enough. But one is one, and its far from neutrality.
I wonder if it will be region encoded?
Well, maybe they will enjoy the experiment.
In any case, while I like Patrice Leconte’s more recent work, I am not sure if this one is my style. I guess I will have to hope that they experiment a little more at least.
Region coding will be interesting to see… Fox is really the only company that region codes catalogue releases currently.
I could be wrong, as my French is a bit shoddy, and I can’t visit the DVDrama.com link (my work blocks everything).