
01-23-2008, 11:15 PM
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Editor in Chief - Super Moderator
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Silicon Valley
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HD FORMAT WAR IS NOT OVER: Betanews interview with Universal's Ken Graffeo!
HIDEF.com member Grizzly302 came across an article with Universal V.P. Ken Graffeo who goes into great detail concerning Universals plans to NOT drop HD-DVD. It is business as usual and this is NOT the same crap Warner feed us before as Warner did not discuss their strategy AT ALL. I really like the attitude because if you are TRULY passionate about something you should also have the "Conviction" to see things through to the very end, no matter how it ends! This article is very good reading and only goes to show that a WAR is NOT over until one side actually SURRENDERS.  Also, Fox is still a weak link for Blu, things are not over yet..
Quote:
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NM: After Warner essentially stabbed you in the back, speculation was rampant that Universal and Paramount would do the same, effectively killing HD DVD. There was also a lot of talk about the phrase "current" being used in the statements. Where does Universal stand on this -- are you willing to say you have an ongoing, future commitment?
KG: First of all, I want to say that none of those rumors were substantiated. Nobody ever talked to us. I know nobody talked to Paramount because Brenda, their PR person, sent out a statement immediately. This is business as usual for us and there are no plans to make any changes. We just made an announcement of our new HD DVD titles yesterday, with American Gangster. We also have a lot of other things planned. It's business as usual.
NM: Sony claims that the PS3 has given Blu-ray the market lead -- is this just posturing so Blu-ray can tout higher sales numbers? Is the PS3 really seen in Hollywood as a device that sells movies?
KG: I'll go back to what we've said over and over: the set-top player is the primary movie device. If you look at the attach rate of how many movies are bought for dedicated HD DVD players versus how many movies were sold for the PS3 and the Blu-ray set-top players combined, it's a 4 to 1 gap. Which says that people who own game machines are not buying at the same rate as someone who owns a set-top. And on the DVD side, your primary player is a set-top.
If you go to a store -- let's say a Best Buy or a Circuit City -- and buy an HDTV and then you want to get your movies to look better, you go to the DVD section -- you don't go to the game section. We have always been believers, not only historically but looking at a lot of recent research that has been done, that for the consumer their preference is a set-top.
The one thing that's different now compared with VHS is that when you bought a DVD player, you could not play your VHS on it. People didn't really have libraries in the days of VHS, because movies were really rented -- 80% of the business was rental. Today it's different because both Blu-ray and HD DVD are backwards compatible, so you have to take that into consideration. In turn, people want a set-top player that lets them play their current movies just as they do now, not on a game console.
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Full article is HERE.
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Last edited by species8472; 01-24-2008 at 06:07 AM.
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