Warner Bros goes Blu-Ray Exclusive

Interesting discussion on why Warner went to Blu-ray.

http://formatwarcentral.com/index.php/2008/01/04/warner-swayed-by-500-million-from-the-bda/

If the payoffs are true for both Fox and Warner, yeah the format war is over, but guess who will pay for the war?

 

Stunned! ....we all heard the rumors over the last few months, but they really did not catch air and fly. As many denials of the rumors came from Warner. Now the CEO stands up and drives a big fat nail of confirmation into HD-DVD's coffin!

"Nice knowing you Toshiba, but the BluRay group just coughed up enough money to make it worth our while to sell out on you. Maybe next time we'll take a look at any new stuff you come up with"! To me, it seems this format war is actually a battle of Checkbooks and cash fed Corporate Studios!

But it will be good to get this Format War behind us, no doubt. But I do feel bad for the retailers stuck with unsellable merchandise (although they wait till some suckerzzzz.... I customer dumped money into players for Christmas) and even worse for consumers who just this Christmas forked out bucks for new HD-DVD Players!

Then agaiin at least this time, it looks like the best Format will win, unlike the Beta/VHS Format War!

 

Sounds like a win for the antitrust lawyers.

 

How silly for BDA to not have paid Paramount $200M then, don't you think?

Could be true, I suppose, but it's a bit early to say conclusively.

 

Warner denies any payment.

Toshiba seems to have been caught totally by surprise. They canceled their press conference.

 

wco81, where did you read that they cancelled their press conference ? I thought Toshiba has 2 hours slotted for CES 2008 ?

 

Sorry, I thought these links were all over the Internet, although this press release does seem unusual:

http://wesleytech.com/ces-hd-dvd-event-canceled-due-to-warner-announcement/483/

 

Thanks ! I went to hidefdigest.com and didn't see it there. So I thought I should ask you for a direct link. ^_^

The next thing to watch is Apple then... whether we will have Blu-ray Macs in MacWorld.

 

Interesting discussion on why Warner did not accept 500 million dollars.

http://formatwarcentral.com/index.p...tsujihara-says-no-payoff-for-move-to-blu-ray/

Since the payoffs aren't true, then yeah the format war is over. The consumer has chosen.

 

Fixed it for ya. The PS3 is blu ray plains and simple. I have to give sony props it took guts to give up 70% market share in gaming to get a monopoly of HDM. Now we will see what sony does with its power it has won. I am not holding my breath because they will have to make back the billions they poured in to this and we know who is going to foot that bill.

 

I agree with that I ment that warner going blu so fast was a loss for the customer. The winner is going to be a niche anyways. So the only way pricing is going to get reasonable is competion the war was getting that done. You think you will see weekly bogos and players at cost in a month or 2 when toshiba calls it quits? No blu standalone player is going to come close to the PS3 for maybe never. So basically the standalone blu players will be low volume meaning maximum mark up now that there is no competition. Now that there is no pressure from toshiba it means studios can keep the price of movies at an extreme premium.

 

If you see this as a genuine effort to establish a HD future, you should be able to see that the companies will do whatever make sense to thrive against DVD. It may be true that they need to recover R&D cost, but the war also cost both sides extra $$$. The player price may not be as low as HD DVD's $99 player this year, but it will need to penetrate the tier N customers sooner or later. Even if HD DVD won the war (rumors claimed Toshiba and company wanted Warner to go HD DVD exclusive in CES 2008), the BOGO sales will be gone too. So let's not pin this on Blu-ray only.

Once their mind are focused, there are quite a few options to get "there" (including chinese manufacturers). If they want to have extra revenue while VoD matures, they need to anchor this one down firmly quickly. Even if Blu-ray has won, MS will compete more fiercely with the lower cost Xbox 360s. So that means PS3 -- the best selling Blu-ray player -- will be stringed along by them anyway (from price and gamers' perspectives).

From consumer perspective, I don't think it's that bad. We will probably lose some ridiculous deals, but we gain in numbers and clarity. Volume also means cheaper players (real economically viable, cheaper players, not artificially subsidized ones). There are still room for fumbles, but I think in general, this is a good news.

 

Can't they return unwanted gifts ?

 

Ok, more articles are trickling in...

According to http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978461.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1, New Line also decided to follow Warner to BDA.

 

New Line and Warner are a package deal. Anyone who follows this stuff won't see this as a surprise.

What'd be nice is finally hearing a date for LOTR on Blu Ray!

 

I was actually answering to Asher's post in another thread here, but I couldn't find it when I posted.

 

I haven't seen anyone speculate about this yet, so I thought I'd mention this idea here - Warner's goal is obviously to sell movies, and for that they need plenty of players on the market.

So what if instead of asking for a direct payment, they basically told the Bluray camp they'd switch if, and only if, they promised to hit certain pricing milestones over the next X months. This could even be seen as an indirect payment/sponsorship of the market, and would be much more in everyone's interests than the alternatives.

P.S.

What's their HQ's address?

 

That was my pipe dream if you read a few of these threads. My hope was warner would force the winner to lower royalties and have to meet certain pricing on players. I doubt that happened my guess is they will get a break on royalties for so many years. Not cash directly but still money none the less.

 

Sorry I don't understand why one HD disc, be it HD DVD or BR means that movie prices will be at an extreme premium.

WITH the war, non-sales prices of movies were around $29. With just BR, are you expecting the prices to increase? I don't see how having HD DVD and BR out there affects movie disc prices as studios that were supporting both (e.g. Warner) had the same price for the HD DVD and their BR version anyhow. That is, it's not as if a BR-only studio waged a price war against an HD DVD-studio.

The disc has nothing to do with studio pricing as I see it - it's all about content against other studios/movies.