Amazon UK Lists Paramount Blu-ray Titles for Pre-order
January 21, 2008 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 (272)
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, Retailers
Through forum discussion on blu-ray.com and highdefdigesrt.com, we have discovered that Amazon.co.uk has recently listed pre-orders for Paramount titles Trading Places, Coming to America and Anchorman.
It is not clear if this is a mistake or a fore-warning of things to come, none the less it is interesting to see these titles, especially Anchorman which was never released on Blu-ray, listed as upcoming releases on the site.
UPDATE: Amazon has changed the movies’ format to HD DVD on their site.
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Looks like the other shoe is about to drop!
It is pretty strange. However, Id say there might be smoke if the had Blades of Glory listed on there.
If this is true, it is both wonderful news and (hopefully) the last nail in the coffin for HD-DVD and the format war.
I actually think Anchorman is a bigger indicator than Blades might be. I don’t think it was ever even announced for Blu-ray release where Blades was announced and even manufactured by all accounts.
Failure to Launch and Freedom Writers are now listed also. It seems that they are not learning if it is a mistake.
But Blades is a title that is known to be ready to go since it was already replicated. However, they could be saving that title to cross promote with another Will Ferrell movie at a later date.
2 new titles have been added to the other 3 Paramount’s
Paramount/Dreamworks is not the distributor for these movies in Europe, UIP is.
Although I am a die hard BD fans (I am former neutral buyer with 3 HD DVDs only - compared to 60+ BD, but remains loyal BD fans), I doubt this has something to do with Paramount going neutral. Amazon is known to have listed wrong items.
FYI, you can get US Blu-ray exclusives (like Disney’s Bridge to Teribitha or Sony’s Ghost Rider) on HD DVD in Europe because of different European distributors
http://xploitedcinema.com/catalog/hd-dvds-c-35.html?osCsid=ab442fa73fcc8de8ccb026743c32f83f
Of course, that is great if you watch HD DVD because there is no region encoding. If you like Blu-ray…US only for you.
DrumAllDay,
Your statements are completely false.
1) Most Blu-rays have no region coding, so anyone can watch them. As with HD DVD, there are many exclusive US titles that you can also get on Blu-ray. For instance, anyone with Blu-ray can buy it from Europe, where it’s produced by Warner and confirmed region-free.
2) The titles listed are not from UIP, they are confirmed Paramount. If you look at the DVD versions, they all say “Paramount Home Entertainment”.
Er…the “it” in #1 above is “Beowulf”, which as I stated is confirmed region-free and released by Warner.
To add a little more salt to your wound, there are several titles owned by Paramount or Dreamworks in the US that are owned by Sony everywhere else, with the added bonus that they’re not on HD DVD. Anyone in the world wanting to watch “The Tudors” or “Almost Famous: Director’s Cut” can not only do so for only a couple dollars more than the US DVD with no region coding, but also mock HD DVD for not having either one.
I’m going to guess that it’s either a regional thing, or an amazon mistake. Paramount goes neutral in the EU and stays HD DVD Exclusive in the US? Could be…
Good news for HD DVD owners that there are some decent new releases coming this year after all!
Is Amazon.co.uk right, or is everyone else wrong? Surprised that the story has got this far without people checking competitor websites - duh!
http://www.play.com/DVD/HD%20DVD/4-/3595167/-/Product.html?searchstring=anchorman&searchsource=0
http://www.sendit.com/video/item/7001000141923
http://www.sendit.com/video/item/7001000141921
http://www.play.com/DVD/HD%20DVD/4-/3595177/-/Product.html?searchstring=failure+to+launch&searchsource=0
“1) Most Blu-rays have no region coding, so anyone can watch them.”
Hate to be the berer of bad news but virtually all new BD releases in the US except WB are now regional coded..
This is no new news to most of us, different distributors in europe for US BD/HD exclusives. Happens all the time.
“Hate to be the berer of bad news but virtually all new BD releases in the US except WB are now regional coded..”
Sorry to call you on your lie, but that’s just not true.
3:10 to Yuma? Region-free.
Good Luck Chuck? Region-free.
Life of Brian? Region-free.
Resident Evil 3? Region-free.
Those are just some of the titles released in the last couple weeks (or coming soon but confirmed by early sales/review copies). There’s tons more.
Great! I’ve ordered some of Paramount’s March 10th releases.
Paramount certainly distribute the DVDs for these titles in the UK, and I’ve seen no indication things will change with BD / HD DVD.
I heard that Amazon.de also has them listed as BDs. However I would tend to agree with hamerg that it looks like Amazon has listed them in the wrong flavour…
I took the obviously completely wacky step of e-mailing Amazon.co.uk today asking them about it. So just a few hours later I get a reply and hey presto the links show that the releases are on HD DVD. I get the feeling I’m doing somebody else’s job here. Abysmal journalism.
hamerg,
We are not in the business of fixing Amazon screw ups, we just report them….
Too bad you can’t “fact check” Tyler. Your response indicates a lack of effort to be a factual reporter, as you’re MORE interested in blogging out there FIRST, rather that RIGHT, and that cuts into the site’s credibility.
It was my posting, not Tyler’s. The post also carried the caveat “It is not clear if this is a mistake or a fore-warning of things to come” - indicating that it was not a set in stone hard fact. Perhaps you guys should lighten up a bit - nobody shot your dog. This is not the kind of stuff that warrants getting upset about.
Should I not have reported the 3rd gen Toshiba’s when they were put up early on Amazon?
So that’s it? One little update line, not even updating the title or running a new entry? You guys helped to spread a lot of FUD and BS here. And I agree, it hurts the credibility of the site. It’s especially telling that the article title hasn’t been updated and there isn’t a new article follow-up to quell the FUD coming as a result of this site. Stuff like this makes my day a little easier, as it usually results in a delete from the bookmarks. Let’s see if FWC makes it right…