All new theatrical titles from Warner Home Video will include both Blu-ray discs and DVDs in a single Combo Pack. The packages will also include Digital Copy, which allows the content to be bumped to various devices.
The HD DVD launch is beginning with a whimper. Warner Home Video, the only studio committed to supporting the March 28th debut of HD DVD hardware has officially announced it will not have software titles ready until April 18th, citing technical issues as cause. While more titles are to follow in subsequent weeks, exactly three titles are currently announced for the new April start date, Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Last Samurai.
There may be more than 220 IMAX theaters operating in 28 countries around the world, but videophiles still love to get their hands on IMAX videos, long acknowledged to be some of home theater's finest demo materials. Favorites among the dozen IMAX DVDs already available include Super Speedway, Everest, and The Magic of Flight. Now, more are on the way.
Warner Bros. will distribute movies through Facebook, the studio revealed this week. The first movie to hit the social networking site will be The Dark Knight.
The move is experimental. It comes on the heels of another unorthodox movie-distribution move, in which the studio offered two movies as Apple Store apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
Some are calling it the end of the format war, others are calling it the beginning. Warner Home Video announced last week that it has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association and will release its films on Blu-ray, and, ostensibly, HD DVD as well. Universal is now the only studio of the six majors to be committed to HD DVD and not Blu-ray.
According to a report by Video Business, Warner is sending out some mixed messages regarding the launch of its Total HD Blu-ray/HD DVD combo discs. The launch was originally set for later this year, but at the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference in LA this week one Warner exec was quoted as saying there was no official launch date and that a Q4 2007 launch for Total HD is "unlikely," while another exec cited a first-quarter 2008 launch for the combo format.
Warner Bros. will kill the recently merged New Line Cinema, cut its overall theatrical release schedule in half, and build profit streams from Blu-ray and video on demand, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes recently told an investor conference.
The format war just took and interesting turn as some juicy pre-CES news leaked out to the Internet today courtesy of the New York Times. Next week at CES Warner will be announcing the Total HD disc, which will carry both Blu-ray and HD DVD transfers of a title on a single disc.
Warner is behind HD on disc in a big way. On September 26th it will release a total of ten titles from the Warner catalog to the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, including the recent Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride on Blu-ray.
Hopes for a disc that would play in either HD DVD or Blu-ray players died a few weeks ago when Warner suspended plans to market what it had called a Total HD disc.
Some of us fantasize about being on Mystery Science Theater. A few of us, perhaps, may see ourselves as Beavis or Butthead. But all of us will get a new way to hobnob with other viewers when the Blu-ray version of Warner's Watchmen hits the streets. This BD-Live release will sync with Facebook, letting users of the social networking site commune with one another while they watch the movie.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking carefully at the proposed acquisition of Hughes Electronics Corporation by Littleton, CO–based EchoStar Communications Corporation. Hughes is the parent company of EchoStar rival DirecTV. Voting shareholders of General Motors, Hughes' corporate overlord, approved the sale late last year. If the deal is approved, the two direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services could become one—and, with 17 million subscribers, one of the largest distributors of television programming in North America.
You're finally on that plane to Tahiti, and you decide to check what's on for the in-flight movie. Oh-oh, they're running Porky's: Part 12, and you can barely even see the screen 23 rows ahead of you. Then you find the headphones---the type with two plastic tubes coming out of the armrest. Time to whip out some of your own DVDs, sit back with some high-quality headphones, and watch a couple of film versions of Mutiny On The Bounty---the Brando and Gibson varieties.
The average American spends nearly as much time in front of the TV as on the job, Nielsen figures show. Now if only we could get paid for the 35.6 hours per week most of us watch, the economy would skyrocket.
This was just one of the interesting figures in the Nielsen Company's "State of the Media 2010" report.
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