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Warner Bros. Joins Sony's Blu-ray Camp

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

October 21, 2005, 1:09 PM

Hewlett-Packard may be wavering on its Blu-ray support, but Warner Bros. and its Warner Home Video division said on Thursday they will release movies in Sony's high-definition DVD format. Warner will also continue to support HD DVD as previously announced.

Warner Home Video will prepare titles, including DVDs from HBO and New Line, for the launch of Blu-ray in North America, Japan and Europe next year. In a statement, Toshiba said it was "more than confident" that Warner's support of Blu-ray will not affect its HD DVD release schedule.

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By ArKay74

posted Oct 24, 2005 - 12:48 PM

Oh well, 2 formats released to the market. Means I'll be sticking to standard DVD's until one of them goes down. Considering that I mostly have all of the (good old) movies which were worth buying for me.

Score: 0

By cubebomb

posted Oct 23, 2005 - 6:06 AM

Who in the hell needs a 50GB DIsc anyways-
HD-DVD will win it-
and about copying the Blue-ray- It will be a matter of Dayz, till someone copies one of those disc, curiosity will make someone do it, it has always happen and it will happen again, is jsut a matter of some good tools and dvdrom-
I think even MS will be trying to crack it- :)- i know i will be--too

Score: 0

By klingon379

posted Oct 24, 2005 - 7:09 AM

Blu-Ray is superior in every way to HD-DVD just like Super Audio CD's are superior to DVD-Audio discs. Discs that require the use of red lasers are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Blu-Ray is much better suited to storing high definition video. The best part is there is enough space left on a Blu-Ray disc to store high resolution 24-bit 96 KHz surround sound with lossless compression. Red laser discs can't store high definition video AND high resolution audio because of their low capacity. 25-30GB of storage is not enough.

As for copy protection, Blu-Ray's is far superior to HD-DVD. People who buy a movie on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD should not be able to copy the movie for ANY REASON. They should only be able to play it on a TV directly connected to a DVD player.

Score: 0

By tci

edited Oct 24, 2005 - 11:20 AM

Apparently you are not familiar with the fair use doctrine, which is part of the copyright act. It is your legal right as a consumer to make a copy of a DVD or other media for your own use/backup, etc. You can't then give it away just because there is no profit involved but you can copy it for your own use. Otherwise I completely agree with your statements.

Score: 0

By klingon379

posted Oct 30, 2005 - 12:00 AM

It is only legal to copy a DVD if you can do it without breaking the CSS encryption on the disc. Until recently this has been impossible to do, but Samsung appears to have found a way to legally copy DVD's. Currently Samsung has a dual deck DVD recorder that can copy commercial DVD's leaving the original encryption intact on the copy.

Score: 0

By Tenoq

posted Oct 23, 2005 - 8:35 PM

Matter of days? Not for your everyday consumer. Do you know how to copy a SafeDisc or Starforce DVD game? I know I certainly don't, and most people think it's impossible without specialised equipment.

If the copy protection is a further advancement on DVD, it's going be quite difficult to break.

Score: 0

By shy_one

edited Oct 23, 2005 - 4:15 AM

If you think about it HD-DVD will easily win this battle for these reasons it's cheaper backwards compatable allows you to back them up with managed copy and the ability to stream the content around your home.

Lets forget microsoft and intel are behind HD-DVD so that means that they are more than likely to be working together and posably with some hardware venders to create easy to set up and use hardware to make streaming content around home cheap and easy.

Microsoft already has been experimenting with this with media center extender now add intel and a few hardware creators into the mix an you have the potential for a realy great multi media experience through out the home with out dragging it with you because it would be all in one place all you would need is the remote for the area your in at the time and your good to go even though that means more remotes to loose:)

Bly-Rays biggest advantage may be the abilty to store more data but the average person does not need 50gigs per disk storage to back up thier stuff thats more for buisnesses and teckies and maybe some people with camcorders and pro photographers not the average person.

Score: 0

By BklynKid

posted Oct 22, 2005 - 1:55 PM

I hope HD-DVD becomes the standard. Cheapper, backward compatible and managed-copys -- what more could you want?

Score: 0

By Neoprimal

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:44 PM

Oh how the tides have turned. I remember when I read an article on how Blu Ray also had managed copy and that they had more storage. They basically called Intel and MS liars.
Sure the latter is correct since it does have more storage space, but at what cost? And no, they don't have managed copy, which is what all this hubbub is about. You won't be able to copy a blu ray disc, period - and you won't be able to stream it's content over any of the new Pre-N wireless or even wired networks because of it's content protection scheme to date. You can copy HDDVDs and stream them over a network. I take 'digital freedom' over 'storage size' anyday.

Score: 0

By jerrico

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:55 PM

At least that will be good for file sharing

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:29 PM

Hmm... so it would seem that they're not really supporting Blu-Ray per se. They're just going to release movies in that format *as well as* HD-DVD so that people will be able to get their content in either format.

Smart move on their part IMO. No matter which format wins, Warner will be available to either side during the format wars.

Score: 0

By kholdstare

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:24 PM

Well I am pulling for blu ray to be the standard but its just not looking good for blu ray lately

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:29 PM

Same here. I want more space. But the cheaper format looks like it will win again.

Score: 0

By nate

posted Oct 21, 2005 - 1:37 PM

I'm not even sure if Blu-ray has yet figured out a way to cheaply manufacture the 50GB discs they plan to offer. That's going to be a huge problem in getting the actual media made, and could hurt the format's chances.

Even an extra $1 passed onto consumers would probably give HD DVD victory, considering DVDs are hovering around the $12-$15 range these days.

Score: 0

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