New Line Pulls a ‘Paramount’
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 January 9, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Studios
High Def Digest is reporting that New Line has indicated their intentions regarding format support.
Unlike Warner who will release HD DVD until May, New Line will follow the Paramount paradigm and drop the ‘unwanted’ format immediately. This means that Pan’s Labyrinth will be the first, and last, HD DVD from New Line.
Apparently they are not going to ship any more copies of this title, so get your copy while you can.
No related posts.
Actually Paramount did support Blu Ray for a few weeks after the announcment up until Blades of Glory, they went exclusive.
Near as I can tell, New Line has been chafing at Warner’s neutrality for some time now, finding new and varied reasons to drag their feet to avoid releasing on HD DVD. That they have taken this opportunity to rid themselves of the hated format comes as no surprise. I suspect that if Warner had gone the other way there would have been as few New Line releases as possible. The most likely reason is a Fox-like DRM fetish.
@Kevin
Yeah, you ain’t kiddin’. I’m just thankful that Pan’s Labyrinth even got released. Damn near my favorite movie of the past few years.
Small comfort in the face of the bigger news, but what a beautiful comfort! I had to resist temptation on the SD version several times…glad the waiting paid off! (phew–that was a close one.)
Mehar, Blades of Glory came out the very week after Paramount switched – they most definitely ended Blu-ray support immediately.