Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (TCFHE) today unveiled an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy including 29 new release and “must-have” catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year. Among the many highlights are six day & date BD/DVD new theatrical releases from Fox including the $241 million box-office family favorite FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER and the $335 million box-office action powerhouse LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, four day & date BD/DVD (U.S. only) new theatrical releases from MGM, 19 ‘must-have on BD’ films from the two studios’ libraries, Fox’s first-ever TV release on BD – PRISON BREAK — and Fox’s intention to release at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD ‘firsts.’
The only high-definition packaged media universally supported by the film, music, gaming and computer industries, BD is the #1 selling high-definition packaged media. In fact, on a worldwide basis, BD is averaging nearly 70% market-share per week of all high definition titles sold this year and, in the U.S., it is out-performing HD DVD by a margin of 115%.
“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, in the press release. “By the end of this calendar year there will be expansive availability of technically vibrant releases featuring never-before-seen, advanced BD-J interactivity as well as a broad offering of playback devices at attractive prices that will prove to any doubting consumers once and for all that Blu-ray is the only way.”
“And as Blu-ray continues to grows stronger, it has become survival of the fittest which is most apparent in the retail landscape where our eager and growing global Blu-ray consumer base has caused a shift that is forcing the allocation of more space to the format that is selling the best. And, in many recent instances of note, top retailers in North America are choosing to promote the Blu-ray format exclusively in their stores,” continued Dunn.
Among the BD industry ‘firsts’ from the Studios’ upcoming global release slate are picture in picture capability, enhanced viewing and surround sound modes with the ability to mix and match picture and sound, direct access to in-movie features through one of the four colored buttons on the BD remote and the most technically vibrant BD-Java interactive multi-player challenge and trivia games to date. The Studios’ slate also takes full advantage of BD-Live functionality this fourth quarter. Internet-connected consumers will enjoy unique, title specific “web-enabled” interactive features and games and “web-exclusive” downloadable content with the ability to connect and interact with other broadband BD users worldwide.
Cementing its leadership position within the industry – previous BD releases NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM and X-MEN THE LAST STAND rank in the Top 20 best-sellers – the vast majority of the Studios’ upcoming global slate will be presented on 50 GB dual-layer discs with advanced BD-J interactivity and feature numerous Blu-ray exclusive high-definition bonus materials that further realizes BD’s incredible potential. Consumers will enjoy the superior video and audio elements of AVC encoding and Lossless HD audio on many of the coming titles as well as enhanced and integrated menus, personal scene selections, search indexing, trivia and other title specific games and high-definition bonus materials.
Upcoming BD-J features exclusive to priority catalogue titles from Fox and MGM include an “Alien Scavenger Hunt” (INDEPENDENCE DAY) that challenges players to earn points by identifying the correct number of aliens in select scenes to unlock additional bonus features; a “Global Warming Trivia Track” (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW) where users must correctly answer questions about global warming to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising and being destroyed; and a historical and geographical pop-up map (MASTER & COMMANDER) that tracks the location of Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey and his enemies.
Blu-ray Disc is a next generation optical disc format developed for high-definition video and high-capacity software applications. A single-layer Blu-ray Disc holds up to 25 gigabytes of data and a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc holds up to 50 gigabytes of data. This greater storage capacity enables the Blu-ray Disc to store over six times the amount of content than is possible with current DVDs, and is particularly well-suited for high definition feature films with extended levels of additional bonus and interactive material. Blu-ray also features the most advanced copy protection, player backward compatibility with the current DVD format, connectivity and advanced interactivity.
Fox takes advantage of the next generation format’s high definition technology and advanced functionality to present its titles with the highest quality audiovisual elements. Showcasing picture quality with six times the resolution of DVD and theater quality “uncompressed” audio for the purest digital sound, the cutting-edge discs also feature enhanced and integrated menus, games, high-definition bonus materials and Java-encoding for more dynamic and sophisticated interactivity.
The Studio’s commitment to emerging technologies is dedicated to enhancing the consumer experience of its products and providing for backward compatibility with their existing home entertainment libraries while also aggressively protecting its intellectual property from piracy. The Blu-ray companies fully embrace the Studio’s steadfast commitment to the fight against piracy and the preservation of the integrity of its properties. Twentieth Century Fox is a member of the Board of Directors of the Blu- ray Disc Association.
A recognized global industry leader, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC (TCFHE) is the worldwide marketing, sales and distribution company for all Fox film and television programming on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) as well as acquisitions and original productions. The company also releases all products around the globe for MGM Home Entertainment. Each year TCFHE introduces hundreds of new and newly enhanced products, which it services to retail outlets — from mass merchants and warehouse clubs to specialty stores and e-commerce – throughout the world. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC is a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, a News Corporation company.
Full press release with upcoming release schedule here.
To put the nail in the coffin Blu-Ray should release a player @ 200 dollars. It’s war clearly if Paramount is sticking with HD-DVD. Their reasons is because HD-DVD is a cheaper platform yet Blu-Ray is outpacing them by 115 percent. Something doesn’t make sense here. Apple should make the push and decide now. I know they favor Blu-Ray be done with it and release it on the Macs. Like how Apple did with the SuperDrive. They brought down DVD authoring within reach for many. If Sony can sell a PS3 for 399 then they can sell a player box for 199.
I’ll wait and see which format takes the prize as the official HD format before I buy anything. Not to mention those players and recorders are just way to expensive along with the media.
Somebody call me when they narrow it down to one format or the other. In the meantime, I can’t really muster any enthusiasm about this topic. Except maybe the fraction of an enthusiasm unit it took to post this reply, about .3 on the enthusometer.
Isn’t it funny how “the most advanced copy protection” is listed as a feature.
Yeah, right. Like consumers are going to want to get involved in the middle of another format war. Hollywood, figure it out & put your egos aside! The consumers do not want to be your guinea pigs! In the meantime, regular DVD’s are plenty fine. I don’t hear anybody clamoring for these new HD formats.
If you only count players, then HD-DVD is leading in percentage of sales – but nobody will release the number of players sold.
Sony has sold 1.5 million PS3’s, which all include Blue-Ray. MS has only sold about 160,000 HD-DVD players for their Xbox 360.
But, Sony consistently claims that Blue Ray disks outsell HD-DVD disks. How much of those sales are to Blockbuster, which recently decided to go BD vs HD-DVD?
There’s more to the press release? God spare us, that was boring enough.
Anyhoo, to paraphrase SJ at the Town Hall, I guess some people still burn disks. 720p movie downloads and streaming movie rentals. Disk = future 8 track. Future Macs – no disk burning at all, think Apple TV. Still using disks? You’ll need one of those computers that still burn 3.5″ floppies.
The entire Die Hard series on BD? sweet! So glad I have a PS3!
whuddevah ….
i’m perfectly happy with my dvds. i think i’ll skip the blu-ray vs. hd-dvd boat and catch whatever comes next.
i’m all for early adoption of technology, but this is a plain case of the studios playing the suckas.
Just as Apple head for small downloadable, highly compressed film formats for Apple TV the film makers are heading in the other direction.
I wonder who is going to win ? You don’t get many 20Gig movies on any consumer sized HD.
Thank you Paramount for only releasing Transformers on HD-DVD format now Michael Bay is not making another Transformers film. Damn format wars….
In other news, Twiki from Buck Rogers has decided to go with Blu-Ray: “BD BD BD!”
While these two formats duke it out. HD downloads will creep underneath making ether format irrelevant.
@B-Sabre
Try over 4 million PS3s sold, and it’s not just Sony who is saying Blu-Ray movie sales are outstripping HD-DVD, it’s pretty much an accepted fact.
FYI: Blue-Ray disks are mastered in the old outdated MPEG2 compression. Why you ask? Because Sony requires it. Why? Because Sony collects licensing fees from MPEG2.
Blue-Ray disks could look so much better. But hey, when they do release them with superior compression, you can just buy them again!
At least part of the reason demand hasn’t really taken off is that there is no 1080p programming on the airwaves, and in any event, it takes a HD-capable set that is larger than the average HD set now being sold to see much of a difference (if any) between regular DVDs at 480p and HD/Blu Ray 1080p, or network stuff.
With the right equipment, there is a BIG difference. The operative word is “right” (and unfortunately not cheap)
I can “barely” tell the difference between 480p upconverted to 720p.
So I really don’t care which format wins.
My guess is that the winning format will be DVD…regular DVD…
What s**t like M$ just pulled, regular DVDs probably will prevail when all this passes.
@ Ken
It is not Sony that requires it, but they are taking advantage of it.
The DVD organization that decided on formats for next gen DVDs stipulated that they must support MPEG 2, H264, and VC-1.
Seems crazy to to put mpeg 2 on Blue-Ray…talk about overkill, but I have heard of it too. They are probably doing it in rush to get content out there. It would take time to recapture old titles and encode into HD formated video. I would imagine this will change as time goes on.
“…the ability to mix and match picture and sound…”
Wow. Picture AND sound mixed together, at the same time? What will they think of next?
@ Ken and @ Mo
Bu-ray uses the same encodings that HD DVD does: MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, Part 10 (aka AVC and H.264) and VC-1. It is NOT restricted to MPEG-2. In fact, when you look at all the Blu-ray disks that have shipped only a relatively small fraction are MPEG-2.
As for picture quality… Look at Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It is MPEG-4, Part 10 (H.264) quite possibly the best encoding methodology out — and is over 30 GB just for the movie itself. The extras take the full data set to over 45 GB. The movie is stunning. I have never heard anyone — or any reviewer — say otherwise.
That’s what you can do if you use the 50 GB storage capability and 48 Mbps data rate capability available in Blu-ray. By comparison HD DVD is limited to 30 GB and 30 Mbps respectively.
For a digital media insider’s lucid reporting on this subject, please see the link below…this format war is being driven by Microsoft’s money and naked greed…to the detriment of the consumer, of course…
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa141.html
Thanks Shadowself. That was informative.
Personally, I don’t see any need to get all excited about a HD format war. This is all smoke and mirrors to get consumers to buy the latest and greatest. I can see the advantages to buying DVDs over video tape; there’s a bunch of benefits there.
But, unless you have a big 46″ screen HDTV you really aren’t going to get much more benefits of either format than you can with just a standard up-converted DVD. Just let them fight amongst themselves and enjoy the technology that you’ve got.
1) The vast majority of consumers don’t care which format has an advantage over the other and may not care to take time to research it to make a better buying decision.
2) They see “HD” and think High Definition automatically. They see Blu-Ray and say, “huh?” Sounds cool though…
3) They also buy whatever is cheapest. And from what I’ve seen, the HD DVD players have consistently cost less than the Blu-Ray players which help drive the market to HD DVD players.
I’d prefer Blu-Ray over HD DVD for the sheer capacity of the discs, but since I don’t even have a hi-def TV yet….
Round & round we go ….
M$ is throwing it’s weight around, SONY has been throwing IT’S weight around since the beginning and now pushes back again … Still, I can’t help but be amazed at how few people are pissed at SONY, and how many are jumping all over M$. I mean, I realize this is an Apple site, but it seems so silly.
Here are the facts as I know them: HDDVD is a much cheaper format for both consumers and producers – both players & discs are much cheaper to make/buy – thus more profitable to sell – when compared to BluRay technology. The image quality is exactly the same for both. HDDVD made it to market first. The performance of the players has favored HDDVD since they both debuted (except for the PS3 which seems to be on par with the best HDDVD players). The storage capacity differences favor BluRay at first blush (25GB/side vs 15GB/side), but multi-sided HDDVD discs are easier to manufacture than BluRay, and the consensus in the industry is that a dual sided BluRay disc (50GB) is probably all the consumer market is ever going to see. Meanwhile, HDDVD already has triple-sided discs well beyond the testing stage (45GB), and may be even will make it to quads (60GB). And frankly, while good for storage and backups, when it comes to that many GBs and movies (and factoring in multi-disc packaging), the relative differences between the two discs no longer matter. Even full-on 2 hr 1080p movies & every extra you can think of will fit in a standard-sized DVD box no matter which HD type is in there. Also, the durability factor has favored HDDVD in most of the testing I’ve seen – the BluRay sheathing over the aluminum substrate is thinner, and thus more easily scratched, even with BluRay’s new ‘anti-scratch’ coating.
Oh and one more thing – the brand recognition that comes from putting “DVD” in the title of an optical disc technology really can’t be underestimated.
So what am I getting at here – just more fanboism? No. All I’m saying is that ‘all of the above’ points to only one thing, even now – that HDDVD is the more rational choice for the entire industry to get behind. The fact that it didn’t speaks more to SONY’s tenacious greed, its penchant for imposing it’s own high-priced standards on the world in pursuit of satisfying that greed, and the insane popularity of the PS2 convincing EVERY 2 dimensional thinker out there (which is to say, most Hollywood CEOs) that SONY couldn’t possibly fail with a new format based on the PS3.
And yet here we are, with PS3s mired a distant 3rd in the Console Wars, techies still arguing over which disc format is ‘best’, with movie studios still subject to coercion from both camps, M$ fighting SONY’s tactics of fire with it’s own, and discs & players still costing way too much for all of us … in short, we have a still-born HD movie industry.
For now I’m sticking with upconverted DVDs. I may decide to pick an high capacity format for storage purposes someday, and in that case it will probably be the cheaper & more durable HDDVD. But for HD movies, I’ll either go straight to downloads (provided the highway robbery Apple & Amazon call pricing is moderated soon), wait for ever-cheaper flash memory to take over the physical media realm, or … Well, I hate to say it, but if things don’t shake themselves out in a consumer-friendly manner sooner or later, I’ll probably start doing the P2P thing again. Like I did with music before Apple made that clusterfuck as rational and affordable as it always should have been.
Maybe Jobs will be the Hero again this time. But it seems to me he’s just as smothered in shit as the rest of the industry pigs on this one. I won’t be holding my breath.
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My hope is that Blu-Ray wins out only because I bought a BD player when I bought a new TV. It is really amazing. I’m sure the HD is also but my wishes are for BD because I have no desire to buy another player. The picture is amazing.
For anyone wishing to see Bluray or HD-DVD in their Macs, take a careful look at what that will actually mean!
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/aacs-tentacles.ars?bub
It’s pretty unpleasant. Personally, I’m glad to do without either on my computer
Let them slug it out and when the final winner comes out on top we can get down to some serious copy protection busting!
What a train-wreck!