RSSMicrosoft Looks to Grow HD DVD Title Catalog
By Ed Oswald | Published July 2, 2007, 2:56 PM
Microsoft is beginning to throw its weight around in the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle, announcing Monday it had teamed with Amazon.com to bring independent films to the format.
The two companies provide the filmmakers of up to 1,000 titles free authoring and setup services to allow their movies to be distributed in HD DVD. The service will be spearheaded by CustomFlix, an Amazon company.
CustomFlix's technology allows for the production of discs only as they are ordered. This offers significant benefits to low-budget filmmakers, as they do not need to invest a large amount of initial money to have discs produced.
Typically, setup and authoring for HD DVD discs costs $499 USD. Being accepted into the Microsoft program covers that cost, although the company said any required artwork results in additional fees that the filmmaker is responsible for.
HD DVD benefits from this because it can scale its catalog quickly without much effort on its own part. Currently the format suffers from a lack of studio support, and adding independents to the mix could potentially solve that problem.
One of the first to use the program is the Sundance Channel, which said it plans to offer its Big Ideas for a Small Planet eco-series.
"Programs like this one from Amazon lower barriers to entry for independent artists and provide audiences with increased access to high-quality, high-definition content," Sundance Channel programming head Christian Vesper said in prepared remarks.
Other filmmakers may submit their work through the CustomFlix Web site, from which both companies will select the 1,000 best works for distribution. From there, the discs will be sold on Amazon.com.
Hocus,
He's on permanent ignore and it pisses him off that I wont respond to his posts ever again. As you can see, he's very upset.
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|LMAO.
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|Looks like your replying here.
A reply is a reply, despite it being in a different thread..
Tosser.
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|Well said Hocus.
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|This is actually a very nice & cool thing for them to do.
We might even start to see some new and emerging talent brought on by this kind of move.....if only others would do the same.
Maybe we might even start to see movies with a little bit of intelligence for a change instead of the 99.9% laughably dumbed-down, instantly forgetable, aimed at infants, sequel laden tedious and frankly insulting 'sh*te' the movie-factories seem to imagine 'we' want.
Shove your pathetic PS3/BD shilling up your ar*e Dave.
This is actually something 'good' that transcends your dreary little PR campaign.
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|You are a Toshiba cheerleader and i know that your feeling was hurt, but i am not sorry about you :) LOL
Here is something to suck on:
http://www.avsforum.com/...&&#post10943000
Hocuspokus / Hollywood___ or whatever your name will be next...
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|"You are a Toshiba cheerleader"
LMAO.
You're projecting again Dave.
I have no connection (and never have had any connection) to or with any of the companies involved (on either side) in this, actually.
No doubt you'll be wanting to talk about 'love' or 'hate' for a CE corporation.
Seek professional psychiatric help, seriously, those are not 'normal' attitudes.
This story is about Amazon & Microsoft Dave, wake up.
.....mind you coming from a blinkered Sony/PS3/BD shill that really is something of a compliament, I guess.
"i know that your feeling was hurt" no, you mean you wish....quite clearly.
............good to see you keeping up the habits of a lifetime & ignoring the (excellent, interesting & hopefully beneficial to emerging talent) point of this thread.
Not.
Still, I've no doubt you couldn't really care less about encouraging and developing new & emerging talent.
I've no doubt you prefer a world of the same boring predictable cr@p in endless sequels of your fav Fox & Sony Pictures movies.
Nevermind Dave.
Try not taking everything so personally and you can (wow, what a give-away!) "suck on" whatever it is you like to.....but nevermind those laughably tiny sales numbers eh?
Neither format sells well in Europe.....just as neither format is selling well anywhere right now.
Wake up.
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|"cheerleader"
You stole that from Hollywood. As in you being the Sony cheerleader.
"Hocuspokus / Hollywood___ or whatever your name will be next..."
You also stole that from Hollywood. We all know your the one that uses multiple profiles.
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|You are the one who writes insane long posts. Fanboy!
hd dud will die soon and with it all of the hd dud fanatics! LOL
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|"You are the one who writes insane long posts."
What's up Dave, if a sentence is too long, has more than 8 words in it and some of those words are bigger than 2 syllables does your brain collapse under the effort to understand it?
Better I give my own view as an on-topic, full and honest contribution to the debate than your usual tactics.
You are the one who is regularly found out to be writing selective, inaccurate & very often plain wrong information.
Jeez to think you have the cheek to label anyone else a "fanboy" or a "fanatic"!
Nevermind Dave, carry on your little campaign if you like but there will always be people like myself putting the other side and confronting your boring, manipulative and frankly insulting propaganda.
You Sony PR drones (or should that be Hydras?) haven't worked out yet that your dreary and so utterly transparent little 'campaigns' do nothing more than put 'regularl' people's backs up to the point where folks enjoy shooting down the BS you lot are always trying to fool people with.
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|That's so true.
.....and what sort of fu*kwit could be ars*d to do all that anyways?
How disturbed and detached from reality would you have to be to actually & really engage in that kind of cr@p so much that you really did wage a campaign 'defending' your beloved Sony/PS3/BD.....to the point where a news article like this about Microsoft & Amazon has to be slammed because of it......or he's convinced the WSJ is working for Toshiba?!
I'm really not joking when I suggest some need professional help.
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|ROFL that is because his post are actually intelligent instead of: "hd dud will die soon and with it all of the hd dud fanatics! LOL" Did you get a little kid to write your post for you again?
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|Hollywood__/Alex Stevens is a Toshiba cheerleader and a Sony hater. He is so crazy that he thinks people are changing names (like he does) just to irritate him. Poor guy... LOL
Now on topic:
Here is how Blu-ray vs HD DVD war goes on:
Blu-ray
http://img157.imageshack...9032/top20blurayfl8.png
VS
hd dud
http://img174.imageshack.../1489/top20hddvdwg8.png
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|ROFL. What are you trying to show there Dave? That sales of BOTH formats are literally pathetic right now? Whenever the real war begins(average consumer) you come back and post the stats k?
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|Exactly. Someone should put this into context and show how many DVDs were sold in the same time period. Just to see where the next gen HD formats are at the moment.
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|OK but the resident Sony shill(s) won't like it :D
"The market for next-generation DVDs of either stripe is tiny so far, though.
Through June, Blu-ray had sold about 1.8 million discs, compared with 1.3 million for HD DVD, according to consultancy Adams Media Research.
A top title such as Warner Bros.' "The Departed," which was out in both formats, shipped 85,000 copies in Blu-ray and 60,000 in HD DVD, compared with 7.7 million for regular DVDs."
From those wll known Sony-haters & paid off Microsoft 'agents'......The Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/pu...ml?mod=tff_main_tff_top
(about 12th paragraph down)
Enjoy. ;)
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|About 1% of the market is what they consist of. It is about 1.8% with both combined. Like I said over and over. The war has not even begun yet. I mean ffs we are talking about 1% here!!!
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|Hocus,
You forget there is about a 17 to 1 ratio of BD players compared to HD-DVD. Those sales numbers for BD are pathetic considering the amount of players that are in peoples homes.
By all accounts, HD-DVD should have less than 10% of the movie sales share.
I liked your link, those numbers are accurate
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|What about that? The format is still week. It will take of once the PC drives get lower prices. They are now $200, and will need to get to $100 or less before everyone will get one.
The thing is that hd dud is nowhere near PC drive market and they will lose the war (joy).
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|"Enjoy. ;)"
This information in compleate bulls*** and HD DVD propaganda:
http://img299.imageshack...99/6784/untitledoy5.jpg
Enjoy!
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|Jeez Dave, you really are getting desperate aren't you?
So now because Toshiba have (openly & publicly) sponsored the WSJ.....in the same way that Sony also sponsor, openly & publicly, the WSJ you reckon that the WSJ is in the hands of Toshiba and all the facts they present are just lies, eh?
You need professional help and/or some strong meds.
Paranoia and fanboy-ism, Jeez that's some weird mixture.
The WSJ gets sponsorship from all over, even Sony.....but I guess you didn't know that, huh?
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|Oh no Hollywood_ I didn't forget.
I agree 3.5 million or so sold PS3s and the numbers of movie discs they're s***ing is laughable.
I see Dave now thinks it's all going to be down to $200 PC drives (presumably he means the BD ROM drives cos there's no PC burner anywhere even remotely near that price point).
Talk about deluded.
We will be seeing a $200 price point soon tho, but not with BD anytime soon
(they think their 'not even profile 1.1 compliant Sony S300 is cheap @ $450-$499!).
The Toshiba HD A2 is down to $250 right now (even the full retail price is now only $299) and if it continues to reduce as we've already seen it do it'll be under $200 for X-mas 2007......which begs the question of just how inexpensive those coming 3 Chinese brands are going to be?
$100 - $150?
Bye-bye BD, it'll go off to be just another proprietary Sony format for PS3 & the handful of BD stand-alones out there.
.....and being the over-priced anti-consumer mess that it is it's nothing less than it deserves.
Good riddance.
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|Dream on Dave.
Toshiba spent the last xx months perfecting their HD DVD slim drives so that they could from now on be fitted to all Toshiba notpad/laptop computers, which they announced they would be doing a couple of weeks back.
(You might care to know they sold almost 10 million last year.
I suspect a lot of Toshiba notepad/laptop owners are going to be working out just how easy it is to hook up their notepad/laptop to their HD TV pretty soon = a nice new HD DVD market - it'll be interesting to see how that new market stands in contrast to those 3.5 million PS3s that aren't selling BD movie discs too well, huh?)
HD DVD is not going away anytime soon.
We'll see those PC drives on sale to the public (and not as OEM drives....which some are currently available as) fairly soon now (by X-mas at the latest I expect)......it's not as if there's a huge demand for them right now
(besides HD downloaders on the net & they aren't exactly - sadly - in a hurry to make life easier for that 'market')
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|The Adult Movie Industry has chosen HD-DVD - END GAME -- LOL.
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|Untrue.. A lie spread by HD-DVD fanboys..
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|Actually it's not a lie.
Vivid kept their BD test running but have, so far, gone 'dual format' pending how that test works out.
The rest of the adult industry bailed out of BD and went HD DVD, not only citing problems with replication & publishing on BD but also BD's noteable cost penalty when compared to HD DVD (which didn't give them a difficult time replicating & publishing).
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|Hocus,
Steve is Dave.
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|Dave really gets around you know.....he's a 1 man (? lol ) little PR campaign.
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|yah
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|No Alex,
He's posting under Benjamin Linus over at the iPhone story because people would rather have a sleek new trendy phone than a PS3.
Americans would drop $599 on a phone in a second because they can be seen in public with the "latest gadget" and draw attention to themselves.
Like I said before, usually the people with the least amount of money are prone to buying expensive trendy items. I have a freind who makes almost nothing and buys $600 leather motorcycle riding jackets and $1000 helmets. He thinks if people see him with expensive gear, they will mistake it for success.
His account is overdrawn almost every week. It seems he would rather go broke trying to impress people than being smart.
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|Exactly, iPhone and Wii owners are retards, their purchases are based on whats fashionable at the time, and not technical excellence...
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|BUt the Wii is fun.
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|LMAO, there we go, the ultimate fanboy response.
"If you don't agree with me and what I like you must be retarded"
Thanks for letting us all know what an infantile, tragic, sad & dreary little blinkered fascist you are.
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|Fun, like MAME is fun...
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|Funny how one of the best selling games on the PS3 is Q-bert, that is what 30 years old. The PS3 a mane machine all that technology to play 30 year old games. What a concept.
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|Lol well said.
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|You ended that conversation in a hurry SGD! ROFL!
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|DaveBG/Aredo posts bashing HD-DVD and praising Sony in 3...2...
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|I'm not DaveBG. Stop writing nonsense. I'm not your lover. Ask Betanews owners to look at the IP and geographic areas/countries/ISPs .. we are two different persons.
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|We know your not Dave. As scary as the thought is Dave's post are actually more intelligent than yours!
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|LOL
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|yeah
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|Here goes the yo-yo affect again...
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|