OK, with all this talk about video and movies-over-the-Internet, the simple DVD still reigns over Hollywood. Two DVD tech developments will hopefully boost the film industry’s flagging post-theatrical retail fortunes.
The first is the planned debut at next week’s CES show of a Warner Brothers-backed HD disc capable of translating video content encoded in either of the two rival HD disc formats, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. The studios think, rightly so, that the existence of the rival technologies is slowing down an already dampened market for DVD purchases and Warner Brothers hopes that the development of this new disc, called Total HD disc, will lure the other studios into putting out their content in both formats on a single disc.
Sony, MGM, 20th Century Fox and Disney have exclusively embraced Blu-Ray (developed by Sony) while Universal is releasing content only in HD-DVD (developed by Toshiba and Microsoft). Warner Brothers and Paramount are releasing films in both formats.
The new disc sounds like an excellent solution to the Betamax-VHS rivalry everybody predicts will occur with the two differing HD formats, although the other studios have to buy into it and at least one, Sony, will be a definite no-show.
The other DVD development, also slated for announcement at next weeks’ show: the studios have approved a new technology, called Qflix, developed by Sonic Solutions, that will make it easier for user to burn movies downloaded from the Internet onto DVDs that can be viewed via DVD players. The Qflix system allows films downloaded over the Internet to be burned onto DVDs complete with the digital lock known as the content scrambling system (CSS) that is inherent in all DVD players today.
With new discs and new DVD burners (obviously CE makers are going to have to catch up and start manufacturing compatible burners and discs — that’s for next year’s CES show, no doubt), PC users can download movies, burn them and watch them on any DVD player. Online services MovieLink and Akimbo, among others, already use the Qflix technology.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:12 AM|Comments(0)
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