It's all happening in the crazy, unpredictable world of high definition disc formats. Earlier this week, Paramount and Dreamworks announced that they would be abandoning Blu-ray to focus on HD DVD as their sole HD format. Industry gossips immediately suspected that certain financial incentives may have prompted this decision - there are whisperings that promotional deals and tie-ins between the studios and HD DVD backers might be to the tune of 50 million dollars for Paramount and 100 million for Dreamworks (more here).
Justifying the decision Alan Bell, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Paramount Pictures, told PC World:
"For one thing, the lower prices of the players: It's good for consumers, it's good for our customer base. For another thing, HD DVD came out of the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum is very experienced at developing and managing specs. [HD DVD] was launched in a very stable way, with stable specifications, and they had specified a reference player model, so all players had to be compatible with the HDi interactivity layer, and all players had to be capable of the interactivity. So when we publish titles in the future that have interactivity, we can be assured that every HD DVD player will be able to handle this content."
Naturally, this is not great news for Sony. With PS3 being heavily pushed as an all-round entertainer, some family-orientated purchasers might be put off if they can't watch all the Shrek movies on their shiny new media player.
But, wait, the story doesn't end there. Apparently, blockbuster movie director Michael Bay was so enraged by the decision he threatened not to work on the Paramount franchise, Transformers 2. Posting on the forum of his Shoot For The Edit website, the director exclaimed:
"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!"
A marvelous display of foot-stamping petulance.
Sadly it wasn't to last. Later, the director was back, perhaps after a quick chat with Paramount bosses. According to Variety his stance had somewhat changed to:
"Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three Blu-ray owners, they were pissed about no 'Transformers' Blu-ray and I drank the Kool-Aid hook, line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted -- nothing good ever comes out of early a.m. posts mind you -- I overreacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.
"As a director, I'm all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard first-hand people upset about a corporate decision.
"So today I saw '300' on HD, it rocks!
"So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!"
The Variety report also mentioned that Paramount had excluded Stephen Spielberg movies from the HD DVD exclusivity. He's a Blu-ray fan and he's got company - at least on the creative side of the industry. Many directors are said to prefer Blu-ray, partly for image quality and partly as the format's larger capacity offers more scope to provide extras and alternative cuts of their movies. (Although Paramount exec Alan Bell points out that HD DVD backers can just provide more discs in the package - which consumers see as added value anyway.)
On the business side of the Hollywood machine, HD DVD is the prefered format as the discs are cheaper to produce. Bell also reckons the interactive features are arguably better.
As for consumers, the latest sales figures suggest that the public is coming out in favour of Blu-ray. According to Home Media Research, quoted in PC Advisor this week, Blu-ray discs are outselling their HD DVD rivals by two-to-one.
It looks like another occassion where the interests of the corporations involved might not exactly match up with what's best for the paying public. Bceause, in the end, who cares about them? They'll buy enough stuff anyway. One way or another.
