Katzenberg sees digital future

While many in Hollywood are arguing over whether Blu-ray or HD DVD will drive the future of home entertainment, Jeffrey Katzenberg has his answer: Neither. Responding to a question at a Bank of America conference in New York on Wednesday, the DreamWorks Animation CEO told analysts that both formats are unlikely to appeal to anyone beyond videophiles.

"Blu-Ray and HD DVD are a niche business. They're not going to become the next platform," he said. "I think for the general consumer, there is not a big enough delta between the standard DVD in terms of where it is today and the next generation."

Comment isn't likely to win Katzenberg many friends among homevid execs, particularly those in the Blu-ray camp who have recently been declaring their side the winner in the format war as well as the inevitable future of optical media.

While DreamWorks distributor Paramount does release movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD, it hasn't put out any of the toon studio's pics in either next-gen format. Katzenberg was more optimistic about digital distribution, telling those present that "the promise is staggering." But while the traditional DVD biz is no longer growing, he said Internet movie downloads won't spark industry growth for a while.

"The incremental income to the movie industry in the next 18-24 months (from digital delivery) is negligible," he told the crowd.

Justice League / The New Frontier

The next installment of the dc universe original ANIMATED movies soars onto shelves when Warner home video releases- justice league: the New frontier –ON February 26, 2008 !

The Title is the Second DC Universe Original PG-13 Animated Movie and the First Ever HI-Definition Animated DVD from Warner Premiere

Warner Premiere, DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation are set to release the all-new original movie Justice League: The New Frontier on February 26, 2008 on DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, distributed by Warner Home Video. Order due date is January 22, 2008 . The original movie will also be available OnDemand and Pay-per-View as well as available for download on February 26, 2008 .

Based on the graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke and produced by Michael Goguen and animation legend, Bruce Timm, Justice League: The New Frontier is the epic tale of the founding of the Justice League . The animated film, written by Stan Berkowitz, features an incredible celebrity-laden voice cast including David Boreanaz, Brooke Shields, Lucy Lawless, Neil Patrick Harris, Miguel Ferrer, Kyra Sedgwick, Jeremy Sisto and Kyle MacLachlan and will be available on DVD for $19.98 SRP. There will also be a 2 disc Special Edition DVD available for $24.98 SRP which contains additional bonus features including a documentary about the pathology of the super villain and three bonus episodes from the Justice League animated series selected by Bruce Timm. All the content from the 2-disc Special Edition DVD will be available on HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

The New Frontier takes viewers on an action-packed adventure, exploring the origins of the Justice League. DC Comics legends Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are all featured in the film as well as Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and The Flash – as they band together to form the legendary super team. Strangers at first, these very different heroes must overcome fear and suspicion to forge an alliance against a monster so formidable, even the mighty Superman cannot stop it alone. If they fail, the entire planet will be “cleansed” of humanity.

Justice League: The New Frontier DVD will feature incredible extras including:

“Super Heroes United!: The Complete Justice League History”- The documentary is a comprehensive forty seven year Justice League chronology from the inception in the comics to vivid animated renditions. The story is told with a myriad of interviews tracing back the early days of DC Super Hero team ups during the Golden Age, to the Silver Age rendition where the established heroes emerged and beyond. Interviews include Paul Levitz (President of DC Comics), Dan Didio (SVP Executive Editor at DC Comics), Michael Uslan (Historian), Gregory Noveck (SVP Creative Affairs DC Comics), Mark Waid (DC Comics Historian and Writer), Mike Friedrich (Writer JLU), Denny O'Neil (Writer and Editor at DC Comics), Mike Carlin (DC Comics Executive Editor), Stan Lee (Marvel Comics Co-Creator) and Marv Wolfman (Writer of Fantastic Four).

“Sneak Peak: Batman: Gotham Knight ” - One part anime, one part Caped Crusader , the result is a glimpse at the world of Eastern anime sensibilities combined with a Western tradition of Batman . A detailed look at the world of Warner Bros Animation, and how they joined forces with the renowned Japanese animators to create the highly anticipated anime film of 2008.

The 2 disc Special Edition DVD will feature even more incredible extras including:

“The Legion of Doom : The Pathology of the Super Villain”- This documentary will examine the early mythological archetypes of nemesis characters from a historical perspective, and see how the tenants of this rich history were adapted and woven into the Justice League stories. The bonus feature includes many of the talent included in Super Heroes United! As well as Jim Kreuger (Writer of “Justice”).

“ Comic Book Commentary: Homage to the New Frontier” - This documentary is a nod to the fans of the New Frontier comic book. This featurette further expands the themes contained in the source material, and how these elements were truncated or evolved for the inclusion in the film. Featuring vivid imagery culled from the pages of the New Frontier comic, mixed with the commentary of Writer and Artist Darwyn Cooke, this featurette is a treat for both fans and scholars of the medium.

“ Justice League Unlimited Bonus Episodes”
Bruce Timm selects three of his favorite episodes from the Justice League Unlimited animated series:

1. Dark Heart – Alien invaders attempt to thwart the Justice League . The fate of the world rests on the shoulders of Ray Palmer , AKA The Atom .

2. To Another Shore - Wonder Woman learns of a plot to steal the powers of the 3,000 year-old corpse of The Viking Prince. It is up to the Justice League to make things right.

3. Task Force X - Four incarcerated villains are released from prison by Cadmus to undertake an impossible mission: steal a powerful mystic artifact from the JLU Watchtower under the noses of the League.

"Having the opportunity to take the unique work of such a legendary comic talent as Darwyn Cooke and create a small screen faithful adaptation of that style is one of the cornerstones in what we hope to develop for core and new fans alike as part of the DC Universe initiative on the Warner Premiere slate", said Matt Bierman, Vice President Production, Warner Premiere.

“Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier is justifiably considered a modern classic, and we at DC comics are excited to share this thrilling adaptation with the book's legions of loyal fans. On Feb. 26, DC Universe Animated Movies will lead everyone across the New Frontier,” said Gregory Novek, Senior Vice President of Creative Affairs, Dc Comics.

“Following the huge success of Superman Doomsday, we are delighted to be releasing the second DC Universe PG-13 animated movie,” said Amit Desai, WHV Vice President, Family, Animation and Sports Marketing. “ Justice League: The New Frontier will certainly not disappoint fans who have been eagerly awaiting this next action-packed DC Universe installment .”

Toshiba Pulls the Plug on HD-DVD

Analysts aren't surprised that Toshiba abandoned HD DVD just one month after vowing to fight on and cut player prices in the wake of Warner Bros.' surprising early January defection to the Blu-ray camp.

Michael Pachter, media analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, said HD DVD's demise was inevitable from the beginning, since Toshiba couldn't compete with Sony on sales volume. Sony included Blu-ray playback on the PlayStation 3 game console, which has sold more than 3 million units in the United States alone, according to research firm The NPD Group. Toshiba revealed during its Feb. 19 announcement that only 1.03 million HD DVD players, including the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, had been sold worldwide.

Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group, said a combination of factors killed the HD DVD format. "I think there were a number of suspects, but you can't quite pin down one murderer," he said.

First came the Warner announcement, which left HD DVD with just two major studios supporting it, Paramount Home Entertainment and Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Hardware sales data the week after Warner's announcement showed 93% of high-def players sold were Blu-ray, according to The NPD Group.

Toshiba responded by drastically lowering its player prices by as much as half. Microsoft dropped the price of its Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on by $50 as well. Toshiba also bought a 30-second Super Bowl ad for a reported $2.7 million.

But apparently the moves were ineffective in boosting sales or digging into Blu-ray's lead. Nielsen VideoScan data has consistently shown Blu-ray software outselling HD DVD software by a 3-to-1 margin or better. Then came the final blow -- or, rather, three blows, all in the last week. First, Netflix announced it would carry only Blu-ray product. Then Best Buy said it would give preference to Blu-ray Disc software in its stores. Finally, Wal-Mart announced it would no longer carry HD DVD software -- an interesting twist, given that the discount chain had been one of the primary sellers of low-priced HD DVD players during the 2007 holiday season.

"Wal-Mart's decision certainly was impossible to bounce back from," Rubin said.

A statement on Toshiba's Web site attributed the decision to "recent major changes in the market," which is a grotesquely understated way of stating that movie studios, video rental stores and electronics retailers had spent the last month and a half pounding nails in HD DVD's coffin.

First, Warner Home Video announced in early January that it would stop releasing new titles in both HD DVD and Blu-ray. A month later, NetFlix also said it would drop HD DVD, news which was followed quickly by Best Buy's decision to promote Blu-ray over HD DVD And just last week, Wal-Mart said it would boot HD DVD players and titles from its stores.

It's hard to imagine that HD DVD could once have been the favored contender. It did, after all, reach stores months before Blu-ray--and did so with dramatically cheaper players. Microsoft had even anointed it as the high-def disc format of the future. But after that head start, most of HD DVD's best features were either unexploited or unadvertised:

* HD DVD backers repeatedly touted the lower manufacturing costs of its discs, but customers never saw that alleged advantage show up in store prices.

* HD DVD allowed movie studios to release "hybrid" discs--a regular DVD on one side, an HD DVD on the other--that would work in current and future players, but studios either neglected that or reserved it only for some titles.

* HD DVD discs were supposed to provide a "managed copy" of a movie to a computer, but squabbles between the format's developers and movie studios prevented that feature from being activated.

* HD DVD did away with the "region codes" that stop you from playing a DVD bought overseas in most players purchased in the U.S., but this unequivocally customer-friendly feature was only ever mentioned in passing by HD DVD backers. Ditto HD DVD's slightly more lenient copying restrictions.

* You could buy a Toshiba laptop with an HD DVD recorder drive at a non-exorbitant price, but standalone HD DVD video recorders for use with a TV never made their way into U.S. stores.

So now we have the more expensive format, with less backwards compatibility and with more stringent usage restrictions.

Toshiba Quits HD DVD Business

Toshiba's decision to no longer develop, make or market high-definition HD DVD players and recorders will mean consumers can start feeling more confident about buying the victorious rival technology — a Blu-ray disc player.

Analysts say competition is expected to heat up among the manufacturers of Blu-ray players and recorders, which include Japanese makers Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Sharp Corp. as well as Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea. In making the announcement, Toshiba Corp. President Atsutoshi Nishida said he wanted to avoid confusion among consumers.

The decision was relatively quick, coming just several years after the competing technologies arrived. In the last video format battle, between VHS, backed by Matsushita, and Sony's Betamax in the 1980s, it took a decade before Sony stopped making new Betamax products.

"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Nishida said, appearing proud and unapologetic.

For some consumers, no apology was necessary.

"I came right away," said Takayuki Hara, who was eagerly looking at the latest Blu-ray players at Tokyo's Bic Camera electronics store as soon as he heard the news of Toshiba pullout.

"I'd been waiting, and now I'm shopping around for the latest Blu-ray machine," said Hara, 29, who works for a food company.

Toshiba's Nishida said he realized Toshiba had been beaten when it failed to win Hollywood backing. Last month's decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format was the definitive blow, he said. It was joining Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox.

"That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

Nishida, who stressed HD DVD was a good technology, tried to assure the estimated 1 million customers, including some 600,000 in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines, by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology. Neither Sony or Matsushita would disclose the global sales numbers for Blu-ray machines. But the shift in Blu-ray's favor became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.

Nishida voluntarily brought up the possibility of class-action lawsuits in the U.S. as he fielded questions from reporters, acknowledging that the idea of disgruntled HD DVD owners had occurred to him. Class-action lawsuits are fairly rare in Japan, and owners in Japan of HD DVD machines total just 30,000. Nishida denied the company shared in any liability as it had no say in the format of future movies.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Toshiba said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by the end of March. HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those. Personal computers with HD DVD drives total about 300,000 worldwide, including 140,000 in North America and 130,000 in Europe, he said.

Although the format defeat is an embarrassment to Toshiba's image, the quick exit is expected to lessen the potential damage in losses from HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba's profitability between $370 million and $460 million a year.

Nishida said the damage to Toshiba's bottom line, from such costs as leftover inventory, was still uncertain. At the same news conference, Toshiba said it will spend more than $15.7 billion for two plants in Japan to make sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010.

With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products. Friday's decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.

Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc. Also adding to Blu-ray's momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.

Recently, the Blu-ray disc format has been gaining market share, especially in Japan. A study on fourth quarter sales last year by market researcher BCN Inc. found that by unit volume, Blu-ray made up 96 percent of Japanese sales. Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

"The trend became decisive I think this year," he said. "When Warner made its decision, it was basically over."

Trading in Japan, Toshiba's stock slipped 0.6 percent Tuesday to $7.63 after jumping 5.7 percent Monday amid reports that a decision was imminent. Sony shares climbed 2.2 percent $46 after rising 1 percent Monday.

Netflix, Best Buy Just Want to Be Friends With HD DVD

It's still making a few gurgling noises underneath its breathing mask, but the death watch for HD DVD continues -- and the latest news from Netflix and Best Buy should only speed up the process.

In a statement released Monday, Netflix announced it would be dropping HD DVD, making its hi-def stock exclusively Blu-ray. Although the company freely admits "only a portion" of its subscribers have started asking for hi-def titles, most of the ones who have are taking theirs Blu-ray -- so no hard feelings, HD DVD, but business is business. As Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer, puts it:

"The prolonged period of competition between two formats has prevented clear communication to the consumer regarding the richness of the high-def experience versus standard definition. We're now at the point where the industry can pursue the migration to a single format, bring clarity to the consumer and accelerate the adoption of high-def. Going forward, we expect that all of the studios will publish in the Blu-ray format and that the price points of high-def DVD players will come down significantly. These factors could well lead to another decade of disc-based movie watching as the consumer's preferred means."

On Tuesday, Best Buy continued the Blu-ray lovefest, issuing a statement announcing that, although its stores will continue to stock HD DVD titles, the company is instituting a policy of recommending Blu-ray. Brian Dunn, Best Buy's president and COO, pounded the latest nail in HD DVD's coffin:

"Consumers have told us that they want us to help lead the way. We've listened to our customers, and we are responding. Best Buy will recommend Blu-ray as the preferred format. Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray Disc players and other Blu-ray products is a strong signal to our customers that we believe Blu-ray is the right format choice for them."

Of course, customers who wanted Best Buy to lead the way before Christmas may be finding this announcement a case of too little, too late -- but who doesn't need another high-priced doorstop in their home, right?

Technology - FUTURE PROOF: Players handle Blu-ray, HD DVD

The consumer-electronics industry has spent billions of dollars on a stupid and unnecessary battle between the two next-generation DVD formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. And so far, it has all been pretty much for nothing. Consumers aren’t touching the things. Nobody wants to risk buying a DVD player that can play only half of the world’s movies.

This column was supposed to be a celebration of technology’s triumph over corporate pig-headedness. It’s a review of two dual-format decks: DVD players that can play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs, not to mention traditional DVDs. You could buy one of these players, the LG Super Blu BH200 or the Samsung BD-UP5000, and be future-proofed. You would never worry that a certain movie won’t play on your machine. You would sleep well, knowing that even if one format or the other loses the battle and disappears, your player will serve you well.

But a couple of weeks ago, there was a seismic shift in the format war: Warner Brothers Entertainment, one of the biggest movie studios, announced that starting in June, it will issue its movies in the Blu-ray format instead of HD DVD. At that point, three-quarters of all high-def movies will be offered only in Blu-ray. Plenty of pundits applauded the Warner departure, declaring the format war essentially over.

The HD DVD camp, however, is declaring itself not dead yet. Toshiba, HD DVD’s inventor, started by cutting the prices of most of its players in half; for example, you can buy its basic player, the HD-A3, for $130 online, complete with seven free movies. Blu-Ray players still cost at least twice as much.

Toshiba points out, furthermore, that every HD DVD player has an Ethernet jack for connecting to the Internet, something that Blu-ray players will only start to get this year. In addition, Toshiba says, HD DVD movies are never “region encoded,” or copy protected so that they can be played only in one region of the world, as Blu-ray discs are. The HD DVD consortium is about to introduce an enormous marketing blitz, in print and on TV, which stresses how not-yet-dead it is.

Callous as this may sound, the world would be a lot better off if HD DVD would just go ahead and die; the lingering format war is keeping the whole new world of high-def movies on DVD from blossoming.

But as long as there are movies issued only in HD DVD - and in the next few months, that list will include Bee Movie, Beowulf, The Kite Runner, Atonement and other popular titles - then HD DVD still has a pulse. Therefore, the war isn’t over, and it is still a bad risk to buy a single-format machine. Which brings us back to the new dual-format players from LG and Samsung. True, they may not be the world-changers they might have been before Warner made the battle tip in Blu-ray’s favor.

But they should still be attractive to anyone who wants to dive into the high-def DVD game now without worry. They should also appeal to anyone who is already started buying movies in one format. If it turns out you’ve backed the wrong horse, a combo player means your early investment in movies won’t be lost, and you won’t have to buy a new player to accommodate the winner, either. These two rival decks have more similarities than differences. Both are sleek, shiny black boxes that provide an absolutely stunning high-definition picture, a so-called 1080p signal, sharper and better than anything cable or satellite can deliver. Both decks handle advanced features, such as the picture-in-picture commentary of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the Web-based trivia tracks on Shrek the Third, without batting a pixel.

Both players convert traditional DVDs, making them look extremely sharp and crisp on high-def screens. Both machines are slower to handle high-def discs than regular DVDs, however; for example, you will wait 30 seconds for either machine to turn on, and another 20 or 25 for a high-def disc to load. It takes that much time for the player to figure out what kind of disc you’ve inserted.

If you press Stop during playback of a Blu-ray movie, both decks remember your place. If it’s an HD DVD movie, you have to resume from the beginning. Samsung’s remote control has a few glow-in-the-dark buttons, but is otherwise a disastrous array of touch-indistinguishable buttons of uniform size and shape. LG’s remote is easier to navigate by touch, but has no illumination. LG’s Super Blu BH200 ($750 online) is the successor to last year’s BH100, which was a true-blue Blu-ray deck with profoundly crippled HD DVD playback.

The new LG model gives HD DVD discs first-class citizenship. It does not, though, show the same respect to high-end audio gear, which has caused some grumbling among home-theater aficionados. For example, the LG lacks jacks for coaxial digital audio cables (which can carry the signal long distances in your home) or multichannel analog-audio jacks (which are prized by purists with high-end gear).

The Samsung ($800 online) has both of those jacks. It also offers another high-end feature that the LG lacks: the ability to switch on something called 24p movie playback, which is supposed to offer smoother movie playback on TV sets that accept that a special signal. And now, the inevitable price comment: For the price of one combo player, you could buy both an HD DVD player and a separate Blu-ray player. For example, you could buy a Toshiba HD-A3 and a Playstation 3 game console, which can play Blu-ray movies, for $530.

Sure, you save $200 or so, but that approach is a royal pain. First of all, it means that you have to fuss with putting the right type of disc in the right player; with a combo deck, you can just shove any disc in and hit Play. Furthermore, a single player takes up less space, requires only a single cable, entails only a single new remote and doesn’t involve learning and maintaining two different decks. Yes, “maintaining.” Both combo decks are works in progress, requiring occasional “firmware updates” to fix bugs and install new features from the Internet, courtesy of the built-in Ethernet jack. For example, LG plans to offer that 24p feature with an update “in the next few weeks.” Nobody ever said progress is simple.) Because of the superior high-end audio and video features, and because it feels slightly more refined than the LG, the Samsung is the better choice, if you can find it. It’s sold out everywhere at the moment.

High-def DVD grows at faster pace than standard

High-definition DVD player sales during the fourth quarter spiked well above standard DVD at the comparable point in the earlier format’s life cycle. Price-driven promotions are the main reason for high-def’s steeper growth curve, according to Paul Erickson, DisplaySearch director of DVD and HD Market Research.

Standard DVD players were priced more steadily during their first months on shelves, he explained, as they were never embroiled in a hyper-competitive format war. During the last weeks of 2007, Blu-ray Disc players could be bought for less than $300, marking a $200 drop from widespread pricing earlier in the year. HD DVD players were offered at ultra-low $99 pricing at Wal-Mart and Best Buy in November.

“There is a much larger spike at the end of the year for next-generation DVD due to strong performances by both formats for November and December, as well as heavy competition-driven promotions for both Black Friday and the December holiday season,” said Erickson.

Additionally, retailers have begun bundling free BD players with the purchase of like-branded high-def 1080p TV sets. Such promotions were started in earnest during the fourth quarter and continue into 2008. The deals are thought to be a key reason for BD’s sales dominance over HD DVD early this year. On the heels of Warner Bros. Entertainment’s beginning of 2008 announcement about dropping its HD support, Blu-ray set-tops dominated 90% of all high-def hardware unit sales for the week ended Jan. 12, according to the NPD Group. HD DVD set-tops represented 7% and dual-format players totaled 3% of sales during that seven-day frame.