Blu-ray Unfazed by Studios’ HD DVD Endorsements, HP’s Weber Says
The Blu-ray camp views the endorsements of HD DVD by Paramount, Universal and Warner as little more than a “trial,” much as they're conducting trials of video-on- demand or other forms of HD content delivery, Maureen Weber, gen. mgr. of HP’s Optical Storage Solutions Business and a key Blu-ray spokeswoman, told Consumer Electronics Daily. As such, she said, “we're not looking at any of this as threatening.”
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Weber said the Blu-ray Disc Assn. is continuing to talk with all the major studios -- including those that endorsed HD DVD Mon. -- with hopes of landing Blu-ray support. Weber said Blu-ray took heart in the fact that no studio endorsement of HD DVD was exclusive to that format. She also said Blu-ray wasn’t blindsided by the endorsements, noting they had been the subject of speculative news reports for weeks (CED Nov 22 p3). “We're continuing to address the issues studios have,” Weber said. With Blu-ray and HD DVD products still a year away from commercial launch, “a lot can happen in that year,” she said. “With the support we have in the Blu-ray Disc Assn. -- we have over 80 companies now -- by the time products actually hit the market, the studios will realize that the biggest consumer reach is occurring on the Blu- ray Disc side.”
Weber acknowledged the studios’ HD DVD endorsements raise the onus on Blu-ray to deliver a showstopping announcement or 2 at the upcoming Las Vegas CES. “We're working aggressively on some things,” including landing support from studios that have endorsed HD DVD and from those that haven’t, she said -- although each of the 3 studios endorsing HD DVD said their support was firm. “We're going to continue executing the way we have been, developing the best technology, the best products in the market, and CES aside, we'll let the market decide which is the best format for the consumer. We continue to believe it’s Blu-ray for capacity and interactivity.”
On WHV’s claim that it favored HD DVD over Blu-ray as the more durable and reliable format, Weber said she found that “a little bit surprising” given that TDK’s hard coat for Blu-ray “is actually the most robust hard coating on the market today.” As for WHV’s claims that HD DVD had enough capacity “for almost unlimited programming options,” Weber said that “from the IT side, I can speak specifically” to the point that HD DVD’s 20-30-GB capacity “isn’t big enough for the future, and we don’t believe that to be the case for the CE side either, to be honest.”
On Paramount’s claims that Blu-ray replication won’t be ready in time for a fall 2005 launch as having factored heavily into its HD DVD endorsement, Weber said Blu-ray is continuing to execute its plan and would have replication “ready to go” by the spring 2005 “time frame.” She retorted that the HD DVD camp still lacked Blu-ray’s breadth of hardware support. “Who’s going to build the HD DVD products they can play back their discs on?” Weber asked rhetorically. “If you look at the lineup at who has the technical prowess in the optical standards arena, every one of those companies is committed to Blu-ray,” as are the world’s 2 biggest IT and PC companies, Dell and HP, she said. Meanwhile, HD DVD studio executives we polled said they wouldn’t be surprised to see more CE companies migrate to HD DVD in wake of the studios’ support. Weber said she didn’t expect any defections from the Blu-ray camp as a result of the studios’ endorsements.