Warner Bros goes Blu-Ray Exclusive

[one]

Surprise, surprise

http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html

Warner Bros. Entertainment to Release its High-Definition DVD Titles Exclusively in the Blu-Ray Disc Format Beginning Later This Year
January 04, 2008

In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format beginning later this year, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

"Warner Bros.' move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," said Meyer. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."

Warner Home Video will continue to release its titles in standard DVD format and Blu-ray. After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008.

"Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices," said Jeff Bewkes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner Inc., the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment. "Today's decision by Warner Bros. to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner."

"A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry," said Tsujihara. "Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience. Warner Bros. has worked very closely with the Toshiba Corporation in promoting high definition media and we have enormous respect for their efforts. We look forward to working with them on other projects in the future."

The "similar threads" feature is useful btw.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=24194 (old thread in 2005)

 

[Deleted member 7537]

HD-DVD is dead. There is no come back for them now.

 

[RobertR1]

The war is over as far as I'm concerned. Go Blu Ray

 

[quest55720]

Well the consumer lost this one big time. So the future is outragous priced standalone players/movies. I will just netflix for now maybe in 2 years there will be a sub 200 dollar fully speced blu player that is not the PS3.

 

[patsu]

Price of CE devices always drop reasonably quickly. I don't think you have to worry about expensive players. While I cherish the news, let's see what HD DVD camp wants to announce next week.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The war is over as far as I'm concerned. Go Blu Ray

The "war" isn't over because the huge behemoth that any next gen format has to beat is DVD. Until there are decent players at $100, and the movie companies stop gouging on the price of Blu-ray/HD movies, people won't shift away from their significant collections of DVDs.

 

[Zaphod]

Colour me surprised. It's not that I thought there were no chance of Warner ever going Blu, but I certainly didn't think they'd do it now.

Statements such as 'the consumer having chosen Blu-ray' is certainly bunk though, as their sales are driven largely by the PS3. Perhaps then the problem was that the consumer haven't chosen anything, so Warner chose to do it for them. With the PS3 posed to be a long term fixture regardless of it's relative success as a gaming console, they might have decided that ditching HD-DVD was the only option for driving one of the two off the market?

Now, Warner have always seen themselves as leaders rather than followers and wanted their input into virtually all parts of the media formats development. With that in mind, I wonder what kinds of concessions they got from the rest of the Blu camp. I kinda' doubt they just sulkingly decided to join without getting some of the things they've been objecting to changed their way...

 

[RobertR1]

The "war" isn't over because the huge behemoth that any next gen format has to beat is DVD. Until there are decent players at $100, and the movie companies stop gouging on the price of Blu-ray/HD movies, people won't shift away from their significant collections of DVDs.

The war between HD DVD and BR is what I'm referring to. Beating DVD is going to be a huge hill. This will be a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed.

In short, Studios will have to force Hi Def adoption to the masses. They won't take it up on their own.

 

[Geo]

I think if I was a consumer who just bought an HD DVD player and a few movies for Christmas, I'd be thinking of fire-bombing Warners offices.

I mean really, that's pretty cruel timing.

 

[Titanio]

The "war" isn't over because the huge behemoth that any next gen format has to beat is DVD.

At least they can actually try and focus on making greater headway generally now, perhaps, if the end of this format war is near.

Also don't get the claims of higher prices if the war ends..DVD never suffered from higher prices for the 'lack of competition'. There's still competition between all the hardware providers and the studios on any platform. In fact, HD-DVD really only contributes one more manufacturer to the HD scene (that is Toshiba), and there's nothing to stop them making BD players in the future if they wanted.

Word out of Toshiba is that this took them by surprise, and they'll be consulting with partners on next steps. I hope to god their partners tell them that the writing is on the wall, so we can get this format war really and truly behind us.

 

[Geo]

"A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry," said Tsujihara.

Warners understands both that DVD has to be taken down. . .and that the project can't properly begin until the next gen format wars are settled first.

 

[quest55720]

Price of CE devices always drop reasonably quickly. I don't think you have to worry about expensive players. While I cherish the news, let's see what HD DVD camp wants to announce next week.

Not in the case of blu player. Out dated 1.0 players still cost over 300 dollars. The PS3 is still the cheapest full speced player that is how bad pricing is. That won't change now that there is no war. The blu CEs have basically refused to budge on super high margins there is now no reason to give up that stance. I will buy a blu player when a full speced player is under 200 dollars but I don't see that happening for a long time.

 

[Ty]

I think if I was a consumer who just bought an HD DVD player and a few movies for Christmas, I'd be thinking of fire-bombing Warners offices.

I mean really, that's pretty cruel timing.

Especially considering how just a couple of weeks ago they denied such rumors, which of course makes me think now they must have been lying; obviously moves this big aren't done on a whim.

 

[Geo]

Exactly.

 

[Ty]

Yea, they could have at least done the classy but evasive maneuver by simply stating that Warner is always evaluating their position but at this time, no change is forthcoming. /shrug.

I'm sad that I need to return my HD DVD player but at least I can start building my movie collection again so I guess it's somewhat of a relief in an odd sort of way.

 

[Asher]

Well the consumer lost this one big time. So the future is outragous priced standalone players/movies.

I disagree. The consumer benefitted greatly from the war, I think. In terms of price (look how quickly they came down) and in terms of features. If it weren't for HD DVD I'm sure most Bluray titles would still be MPEG-2 and I'm not sure if VC-1 and AVC would even be considered for Bluray standards. Not to mention profile 1.1 and 2.0 Bluray features.

 

[wco81]

Remember caveat emptor?

There were two formats out there and Toshiba was exhibiting some desperation, selling at prices where there were no margins to entice other manufacturers.

And even after paying off Paramount to drop Blu-Ray support and before this Warners decision, it had less content support.

Lot of HD-DVD buyers rationalized that at the fire-sale prices, it didn't matter if HD-DVD lost.

 

[XeRo]

http://wesleytech.com/

This is a joke?

 

[Valzic]

The more I think about it, this timing is bad. A lot of these HD-DVD's and players were bought at stores with pretty liberal return policies. I can see a lot of stuff being returned.

Movies and players purchased or received at Christmas from places like Walmart. It would serve Warner right if they got a lot of stuff back from Walmart.

 

[inefficient]

It's about time.

Hopefully this will clear up buyer confusion and lead more people to BluRay. I currently own 20 BR movies and am quite pleased with every one of them.