Paramount Goes Hd-DVD only: Men in white coats called
The entertainment industry never ceases to amaze me. They seem to be the only companies in the world that go out of their collective ways to make it harder for people to purchase their wares. Recently we had Universal’s bizarre decision to release music in DRM free formats to everyone but the leading seller of online music, and now Paramount and Dreamworks have decided to limit their support to one of the two competing High Definition disk formats. Now, this in itself would not be so bad. Blu-Ray disks outsells HD-DVD by a factor of two to one. The vast majority of players out there are blu-ray (PS3’s) so it would make sense to adopt blu-ray only. So what does paramount do? Announce their decision to exclusively support HD-DVD. You really do wonder if the execs of these big entertainment companies sit around their collective board rooms and try to come up with new ways to screw themselves.
The technology press has been left scratching their collective heads as to the possible reasoning for making such a ridiculously stupid marketing move. This only prolongs the format war for consumers and further entrenches both camps, when there is already a clear technological and market advantage for blu-ray. Of course many are crying foul and suspicions of a “contribution” from the HD-DVD lobbying group. And then they wonder why there’s rampant piracy.
Idiots.
[UPDATE:]
Fox and MGM have released their own press release to counter Paramount’s bizarre announcement. Key paragraph:
“Given that Blu-ray has consistently outsold HD DVD all year, and this is the case for any titles released by any studio in both formats, we believe that the time is right for us to accelerate our activities and help convert the nearly 60 million high definition households worldwide into Blu-ray households,” noted Mike Dunn, President Worldwide, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
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