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Except for Paramount and Warner, which release movies on both formats, Sony,
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Buena Vista, Lionsgate, Warner Home Video
and Paramount Home Entertainment are releasing films exclusively in Blu-ray, while
only Universal is exclusively releasing movies on HD DVD.
In other words, the increased variety of studios participating on the constant
introduction of new releases creates a wider choice of titles that could certainly
attract more consumers than fewer studios.
Sony Pictures did not waste the opportunity to declare an early victory comment as
follows:
“I think finally everything that we knew going into this format has started to
happen,” said Sony Pictures Home Entertainment worldwide president David Bishop.
“We have a critical mass of content, we have the biggest mass of consumer
electronics companies in the world supporting this format. That has moved Blu-ray
into the forefront. The message that we’re going to put out to the consumer now is,
now it is safe to make a choice, no more fence-sitting is needed.”
Regarding hardware, more than 1 million US homes were reported to have Blu-ray
players of some kind (standalone units or PS3 consoles). Consideration should be
given to the fact that it was only during the previous few weeks that Blu-ray players
(Pioneer, Sony, PS3) were on the market to make for that million, other than the
Samsung player that received disappointing performance reviews when it was first
introduced a few months earlier, which would certainly have discouraged consumers
to purchase the Samsung player, and Blu-ray discs in general.
Film Grain Added to HD DVD
In July 2006, Thomson's announced that their Film Grain technology will be used
during playback of HD DVDs to recreate the film grain extracted before the video
compression stage.
In cooperation with SMPTE, the DVD Forum selected Film Grain technology for
mandatory inclusion in HD DVD products, RCA's HDV5000, Toshiba's HD-A1 and HD-
XA1, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD player.
Thomson's Film Grain technology can also be embedded in broadcast and home
theater player devices to maximize bandwidth and storage space while viewers see
movies that match the filmmaker's artistic intent.
The technology can also be implemented on H.264 compression and adapted to
other compression algorithms.
Broadcom's BCM7411D and Horizon Semiconductor's Hz100 and Hz300 are the
integrated circuits that will incorporate Film Grain technology.
Sigma Designs will soon offer an IC solution. Sonic Solutions is integrating Film
Grain technology in its HD DVD production tools. NVIDIA is building hardware for its
advanced line of Quadro Graphic Processing Units, and InterVideo, and CyberLink are
integrating the technology into their personal computer HD DVD players.
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