Toshiba to drop HD DVD

I don't think Paramount can hang onto all that unless they stay away from BluRay for at least a year and keep producing HD-DVD titles.

You're probably right, though, because it's unlikely that Paramount would lose that much profit from lack of BluRay anyway. BR owners that like Paramount movies would still buy their DVDs. Chances are that Paramount would only partially null the contract with Toshiba.
Surely because Toshiba "killed" HD-DVD they cannot ask for the money back.

I thought this is why Paramount never followed Warner when it was obvious HD-DVD was on it's last legs.

They cancel the contract, they have to pay it back, Toshiba kill HD-DVD, then that's their problem.
 
BR owners that like Paramount movies would still buy their DVDs.

Not universally true. I for one, do not buy DVDs anymore. That means I don't get to enjoy a lot of Universal and Paramount movies that I would like to see, but there's still plenty of other titles out there for me to view so it's not the worst thing that ever happened.
 
Surely because Toshiba "killed" HD-DVD they cannot ask for the money back.

I thought this is why Paramount never followed Warner when it was obvious HD-DVD was on it's last legs.

They cancel the contract, they have to pay it back, Toshiba kill HD-DVD, then that's their problem.

This is all assuming that it was actually a cash enticement and that it was paid in advance, which is highly unlikely.
 
This is all assuming that it was actually a cash enticement and that it was paid in advance, which is highly unlikely.

It must be something written into some contract that Paramount signed with Toshiba/Microsoft, otherwise it makes no sense at all for Paramount to support HD-DVD after Toshiba has dropped it.

Paramount announced a deal recently to use Microsoft Live to distribute it's movies. Maybe this Microsoft deal is tied into the same contract, so preventing Paramount reneging on the contract. There certainly have been reports about Microsoft paying money to Paramount to drop Bluray. A Microsoft/Toshiba/Paramount deal certainly would make sense to avoid anti-trust and the tort of interference in business investigations which Toshiba would have been subject to if Toshiba directly paid Paramount. The EU was investigating accusations that Bluray had done the same thing, but those seem to have drawn a blank. It is also interesting that Toshiba said that it would be working with it's allies (presumably Microsoft in particular) to see if the IP in HD-DVD could be utilised. Maybe Toshiba has something in the contract as well to benefit from, otherwise, they would surely be better off financially simply by licensing Bluray from Sony, and converting their factories to Bluray player manufacture, instead of shutting them down. HD player manufacture has to be important to a major CE manufacturer like Toshiba.
 
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It must be something written into some contract that Paramount signed with Toshiba/Microsoft, otherwise it makes no sense at all for Paramount to support HD-DVD after Toshiba has dropped it.

Paramount announced a deal recently to use Microsoft Live to distribute it's movies. Maybe this Microsoft deal is tied into the same contract, so preventing Paramount reneging on the contract. There certainly have been reports about Microsoft paying money to Paramount to drop Bluray.

We've already discussed in the console forum. The Paramount deal announced recently was a UK/British announcement. There was already a Video Marketplace deal in place in the US back in November 2006 when the Video Marketplace went live and some 9 months before Paramount went HD DVD exclusive.

As for the "reports" of Microsoft paying Paramount, they were all baseless accusations. Microsoft categorically denied such payments.

Tommy McClain
 
We've already discussed in the console forum. The Paramount deal announced recently was a UK/British announcement. There was already a Video Marketplace deal in place in the US back in November 2006 when the Video Marketplace went live and some 9 months before Paramount went HD DVD exclusive.

As for the "reports" of Microsoft paying Paramount, they were all baseless accusations. Microsoft categorically denied such payments.

Tommy McClain

So what you are saying that if Microsoft says so, then it is true. You know that what people say isn't always true, particularly if there is something they want to hide.

Anyway, the deals are unlikely to have been payments, they would have been "agreements" between Microsoft, Paramount, and Toshiba - and we certainly know that the three parties signed agreements. Microsoft can easily claim it wasn't a payment, but agreement for sharing business. We simply don't know what conditions those agreements contained. All we know is that Paramount is doing something that makes no sense at all in any other context, in that they won't drop the HD-DVD format even after player manufacture has ceased.
 
So what you are saying that if Microsoft says so, then it is true. You know that what people say isn't always true, particularly if there is something they want to hide.

Yes, until I read substantial proof that says otherwise. I'll always take the word of a publicly traded company over anonymous baseless accusations.

Anyway, the deals are unlikely to have been payments, they would have been "agreements" between Microsoft, Paramount, and Toshiba - and we certainly know that the three parties signed agreements. Microsoft can easily claim it wasn't a payment, but agreement for sharing business. We simply don't know what conditions those agreements contained. All we know is that Paramount is doing something that makes no sense at all in any other context, in that they won't drop the HD-DVD format even after player manufacture has ceased.

The problem is that you inferred that Microsoft was _paying_ Paramount to forgo Blu-ray support. Had you left out that reference and left the "agreement" part, I wouldn't have had such a problem with it.

Tommy McClain
 
Yes, until I read substantial proof that says otherwise. I'll always take the word of a publicly traded company over anonymous baseless accusations.



The problem is that you inferred that Microsoft was _paying_ Paramount to forgo Blu-ray support. Had you left out that reference and left the "agreement" part, I wouldn't have had such a problem with it.

Tommy McClain

A publicly traded company which has recently been convicted of precisely this type of illegal behaviour in the US, EU, Korea, and I believe Japan, and including tying movie formats. So you would take the word of a convicted felon and a serial offender as gospel truth just because they say they are completely innocent, as they no doubt said before they were convicted? As for myself I am simply pointing out that there seems to be something odd going on here, and there is some sort of agreement between the three parties involved, and the likelyhood is that the agreement is responsible for the oddness. By the way, I have never been convicted of any felony unlike the publicly traded company you place your blind faith in, and unlike Microsoft, I have no vested interests in Microsoft's or anybody else's involvement in movies or anything else.

What I am saying is that any statement like the one Microsoft has made can simply be a play on words, like one famous guy from the same country who said he didn't inhale or impale and so didn't do anything wrong.

Of course Microsoft makes payments when it makes agreements like this - any commercial transaction involves payments or payments in kind. It is just such payments can be hidden behind a contract that looks like it has a respectable purpose - like Paramount is also getting something out of the deal besides purely monetary advantage for ditching Bluray. Microsoft did this with OEM contracts it has made which have subsequently been found to be illegal, and attaches NDAs to them so word doesn't get out, and so do other companies who are doing anything similar that may come under anti-competition investigation. Companies who do this hide the payments behind legal mumbo jumbo to make it look like it is an agreement that was made with the genuine intention of business benefits for both parties and not simply an agreement where one party is paid for dropping a competitors products.

For example instead of writing into the contract "Paramount shall receive $100 million in return for dropping Bluray disk support for one year so as to help kill off the Bluray format", it could be written as "Paramount shall receive $100 million for exclusive rights to it's movies on HD media and online download distribution rights. The agreement shall also include rights for distribution by Microsoft's partner Toshiba on HD-DVD." That looks a lot better and it is less obvious that it may be illegal.

The bottom line is that as I said, we don't know what is written into the contracts. What we do know is that Paramount is not dropping HD-DVD even after Toshiba has, and Toshiba is talking about some deal with it's "allies" rather than about getting it's factories going again manufacturing what is definitely the future HD movie format - BD format- rather than shutting it's player factories down, all of which seems mighty strange.
 
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Heh, the author of that blog claims "Microsoft pushed HD-DVD on PCs with support built into Windows Vista" while in fact Vista, and XP, provide the same level of support for Blu-ray as they do for HD DVD. And on top of that, the guy doesn't even know what he is talking about well enough to know there is no dash in "HD DVD", rather he is obviously more interested in bashing MS than anything.
 
Heh, the author of that blog claims "Microsoft pushed HD-DVD on PCs with support built into Windows Vista" while in fact Vista, and XP, provide the same level of support for Blu-ray as they do for HD DVD. And on top of that, the guy doesn't even know what he is talking about well enough to know there is no dash in "HD DVD", rather he is obviously more interested in bashing MS than anything.

No. What you claim is not true. HD-DVD support was built into Vista, whereas BD had drivers you had to install drivers - and you know how problematic drivers and driver certification is with Vista. However the most important difference was that Vista supported transfer of HD-DVD movies onto the hard drive under Vista's DRM, whereas BD couldn't do that (because several movie studios thought that might lead to piracy). This also explains Microsoft's role in promoting HD-DVD, because of the reliance on Microsoft DRM, which would help Microsoft establish a monopoly on home theater systems, and movie distribution if HD-DVD had succeeded
 
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Heh, the author of that blog claims "Microsoft pushed HD-DVD on PCs with support built into Windows Vista" while in fact Vista, and XP, provide the same level of support for Blu-ray as they do for HD DVD. And on top of that, the guy doesn't even know what he is talking about well enough to know there is no dash in "HD DVD", rather he is obviously more interested in bashing MS than anything.

Yup, reading him was painfull. I guess he had time to waste and wrote this crap.
 
No. What you claim is not true. HD-DVD support was built into Vista, whereas BD had drivers you had to install drivers - and you know how problematic drivers and driver certification is with Vista.
I don't know, my drive plays back Blu-ray movies just fine and I don't recall having to install any drivers. Device manager says the drive uses the same standard 6.0.6000.16386 driver from Microsoft that my half a decade old standard DVD drive does. So what are these driver support issues you are eluding to?

However the most important difference was that Vista supported transfer of HD-DVD movies onto the hard drive under Vista's DRM, whereas BD couldn't do that (because several movie studios thought that might lead to piracy). This also explains Microsoft's role in promoting HD-DVD, because of the reliance on Microsoft DRM, which would help Microsoft establish a monopoly on home theater systems, and movie distribution if HD-DVD had succeeded
Are you suggesting that Vista once supported managed copy with HD DVD, but doesn't anymore, and now supports managed copy with Blu-ray? That is what your use of the past tense implies, but I'm at a loss as to how you could have come to such conclusions and hence not sure what to make of your argument in general.
 
I don't know, my drive plays back Blu-ray movies just fine and I don't recall having to install any drivers. Device manager says the drive uses the same standard 6.0.6000.16386 driver from Microsoft that my half a decade old standard DVD drive does. So what are these driver support issues you are eluding to?


Are you suggesting that Vista once supported managed copy with HD DVD, but doesn't anymore, and now supports managed copy with Blu-ray? That is what your use of the past tense implies, but I'm at a loss as to how you could have come to such conclusions and hence not sure what to make of your argument in general.

I am not talking about the standard non DRM Windows drivers. Vista's wall to wall DRM was supposed to come in at some stage in future for movies, and Vista was to incorporate HD-DVD DRM built in. The Bluray specs don't allow managed copies, hence Microsoft's support for the HD-DVD format.
 
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