Paramount's CTO Gives Technical Reasons for HD DVD Exclusivity

Posted by Jason Chen at 5:10 AM on August 24, 2007

Paramount and Dreamworks' recent decision to dump Blu-ray and go HD DVD exclusive may have had something to do with the $150 million incentive, but Paramount's Chief Technical Officer says it's not just that. He lays out the technical reasons why HD DVD is a superior platform, many of which we've seen and heard before.

AU: Personally, I'm all for HD DVD coming out on top. It's the better specced technology AND gives us consumer-folk a better deal with no region codes, and Blu-rays advantages lie in disc capacity (not that big a deal, even long term as both formats will multilayer) and studio support. If studios start to realign, for whatever reason, then that could swing it for HD DVD. The sluggish PS3 isn't helping Blu-ray as much as they'd hoped... though here in Australia the stats are abyssmal all round.
FWIW, I've got both in my house - Blu-ray on PS3, and HD DVD on Xbox 360. -SB

Among his reasons are the fact that the HD DVD spec is a "very consistent, stable specification." On the other hand, you've got the ridiculous tomfoolery with the Pirates Blu-ray disc, which was caused by Blu-ray's BD-Java implementation and its oft-changing spec. He says the increased size on Blu-ray discs aren't much use (not many movies even use this space). Also, there's the HD DVD's heritage to the DVD (it came out of the DVD Forum), Managed Copy and standardized internet connectivity from day one. Very few developers will develop content that can be downloaded onto Blu-ray if storage and an internet connection haven't been mandated on every player sold.

So what's the upshot of what he's saying? How does this affect your purchase decision? Well, it doesn't, at this point. Even if HD DVD is a better platform, it's all up to the studios and the HD DVD/Blu-ray camps to throw money around to try and gather support. In the end it's deals and money that will decide the winner of the format wars, not who has the better technology. [Ars Technica]

Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)

Cam

Posted August 24, 2007 11:40 AM

Here Here, I'm all for HD-DVD. I don't really care about the technical specs and all that mumbo jumbo, but i do like not being locked to Region Codes. Allows me to get my HD-DVD's from amazon.com weeks before they get released in AUS, also for a few bucks cheaper.

Tilly

Posted August 24, 2007 11:51 AM

"Also, there's the HD DVD's heritage to the DVD (it came out of the DVD Forum),"

This line is actually a little worrying. Because of the DVD forum, we ended up with DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD_+RW, meaning more expense going into hardware just to play these multi standard of the same freaking disk! So the multy format players can play all DVD but somewhere inside that player is a chip that is designed to play, but really wasn't needed in the first place.

Or am I wrong?