So, Universal: when will we see a Blu-ray title?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 16 February 2008 17:23

Opinion and Analysis

Paramount also look a bit silly having defected to the wrong format, and also stand to lose millions, but as we just noted, as least they received a large paycheque for doing so, making any losses easier to swallow.

Toshiba tried cutting prices of HD DVD players by up to 50%, bundling in a stack of free movies, but this failed to ignite sales, as did a US $2.7 million advertising campaign during Superbowl, the biggest sporting event in the US.

At least the Superbowl ad campaign wisely touted HD DVD players as excellent for upscaling existing DVD movies – but if you’re going to buy a next-gen player, why wouldn’t you buy a Blu-ray player that also had the same DVD upscaling technology?

Microsoft also cut the price of their HD DVD add-on by 50% in the last couple of weeks. The rumours that Microsoft could produce a Blu-ray add-on drive instead in the future could well now come true – the Xbox 360 certainly has the processing grunt to display Blu-ray movies at full 1080p, as it did for 1080p HD DVD movies.

Toshiba still haven’t officially declared HD DVD dead, but everyone is now simply waiting for the inevitable announcement.

Toshiba could still choose to drag it out for a few weeks, but NHK’s report points to a possible announcement this weekend.

Whether Universal will still bother to release all those HD DVD titles is unknown.

If they do, they will surely sell at least some to existing owners of HD DVD players, but the user base just isn’t big enough to keep on pressing HD DVD movies for indefinitely.

So, Universal – when will we see your movies on the Blu-ray format? It can’t be long now, while Paramount will also have to make the same decision and go back to the Blu-ray fold, sooner or later, if either company plan to play any futher part in the high-def movie revolution.