Paramount CTO Speaks Out On Switch to HD DVD

[FookLai]

In a new interview, Paramount's chief technology officer offers up the most detailed explanation yet of the studio's technical rationale for switching to HD DVD.

 

With reports swirling that Paramount and sister studio DreamWorks received up to $150 million dollars in incentives to drop Blu-ray, Alan Bell, executive vice president and CTO for Paramount Pictures says there's more to his company's decision to dump Blu-ray than simply business dealings.

 

In an interview in PC World Magazine, Bell said that after publishing titles on both formats, Paramount had found HD DVD to have more stable tech specs and leaner programming code than its high-def rival, advantages that the executive attributes directly to the format's outgrowth out of the DVD Forum.

 

"[HD DVD] was launched in a very stable way, with stable specifications, and they had specified a reference player model, so all players had to be compatible with the HDi interactivity layer, and all players had to be capable of the interactivity," explained Bell. "That speaks to the DVD Forum, that it published specs that were complete and market-ready, and that it didn't need to publish up [and change the specs], as Blu-ray has. To some degree, [such changes are] going to create some legacy issues."

 

Of Blu-ray's greater storage capacity than HD DVD, the executive called it "a little bit overrated," saying that most titles don't require a capcity more than 30GB, and in cases where they do, Paramount would issue a second disc for bonus features.

 

"Making a choice like the one Paramount has made is a multifaceted choice," said Bell. "It depends upon manufacturability, the reliability of players, the cost, the infrastructure that's developed to support our creation of titles. Many different factors came into play--including capacity. When Paramount made this decision, we considered the broad spectrum."

 

Original link: http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Paramount/Paramount_CTO_Speaks_Out_On_Switch_to_HD_DVD/885

Full Interview: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c,dvdtechnology/article.html

[audionoob1624705779]

I agrees with everything he said, but I still have a PS3. :)

[SiriuslyCold]

is there a link to the article?

 

I'd suggest that if you are quoting, a link is appropriate :)

 

 

edit: Full interview here

 

 

[FookLai]

is there a link to the article?

 

I'd suggest that if you are quoting, a link is appropriate :)

 

 

Modified the first post with the link, add in the full interview of the CTO link also.

 

Fook Lai

 

PCW: What about the additional capacity of Blu-ray, which has 50GB dual-layer discs, as opposed to HD DVD's 30GB dual-layer discs? Some studios have cited the additional capacity as necessary. Are you going to miss having the extra headroom?

 

CTO: This is a little bit overrated. Making a choice like the one Paramount has made is a multifaceted choice: It depends upon manufacturability, the reliability of players, the cost, the infrastructure that's developed to support our creation of titles. Many different factors came into play--including capacity. When Paramount made this decision, we considered the broad spectrum.

 

If everything else were equal, more capacity would be better. Why not?

 

But if you convert the playing time, a 30GB disc gives you somewhere between 3 and 4 hours of capacity. It depends upon the nature of the movie and how you compress it. There's no compromise on the quality. We've found that 95 percent of movies are less than 2.25 hours long. With a disc whose capacity is 3 or 4 hours, you can put a fair amount of bonus material on that disc as well. So 30GB with the option to add another disc is fine, from our point of view.

[ALERT1624705860]

"[HD DVD] was launched in a very stable way, with stable specifications, and they had specified a reference player model, so all players had to be compatible with the HDi interactivity layer, and all players had to be capable of the interactivity," explained Bell. "That speaks to the DVD Forum, that it published specs that were complete and market-ready, and that it didn't need to publish up [and change the specs], as Blu-ray has. To some degree, [such changes are] going to create some legacy issues."

 

Original link: http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Paramount/Paramount_CTO_Speaks_Out_On_Switch_to_HD_DVD/885

Full Interview: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136253-c,dvdtechnology/article.html

 

Very true huh? Make sense. End of the day, I'll still be neutral to both formats.

[htfreak]

If anyone has been following the conspiracy theories on AVS, the latest one concerning the possibility of Warner/Universal/Paramount dropping regular DVD releases for DVD/HD-DVD combos looks to be very real.  Firstly, this will help the 3 studios to shore up declining DVD sales and also expose consumers to the High-Def disc format at the same time. 

 

Granted that they may have to slightly mark up the price of regular DVD's to compensate for the increased production costs but if they were to keep prices to below $19.99, this may just work.  Couple this with the potential for HD-DVD players to hit the $199 mark during the year-end buying seasion.  Both these action could practically sound the death knell for BD since they do not have this combo solution to fall back on.  The next 2 months is going to look very interesting.

[dmateo]

If there is anything I learned from corporate world is not to take anything business / senior management said on face value. :)