Studios Freed if Toshiba Cedes?
Posted by Dave Cowl on February 18, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Studios
As expected there is a mess of articles surrounding Toshiba today, with few bringing any new information to light.
Perhaps one exception is this article at the Wall Street Journal.
They report that if Toshiba withdraws from the HD DVD business, Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures, both of which support the format exclusively, would be immediately released from their commitments, one of the people familiar with the situation said. Warner Bros., which is obligated to sell HD DVD movies through May under its contract, would also be freed from those terms.
I kinda get the feeling that Warner is begrudgingly supporting HD DVD to mid 2008 – it will be interesting to see what they do if they are released from th contractual obligation to do so.
Related posts:
Geez, I hope they at least make good on the titles they’ve announced. If anything gets released beyond that point, well that would just be peachy.
If you look on this release schedule…
Even before the BB/Netflix and WalMart announce their plans to drop HD-DVD, There is pretty much NOTHING coming out of Paramount or Universal.
http://formatwarcentral.com/index.php/2008/02/18/star-trek-season-2-canceled-not-delayed/
WB is still listed with more titles than anyone else. Paramount’s last title is March with the jack Ryan colletion. Nothing from Universal… period. American Ganster, coming out today is the LAST title.
So in effect, nothing much is left to choose from for HD-DVD. The list shows double the titles for blu… but that will change quickly – perhaps double as the last studios need to get into the business.
OOPS I posted the WRONG URL – wrong tab from opera. (killer Web browser, finally able to ditch IE)
The following LINK is correct:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=948265