Industry News
By Shane C. Buettner March 26, 2006 — HD DVD Player Launch To Synchronize With Warner Software Launch Date
As anticipated, Toshiba has officially announced it will delay the launch of its HD DVD players to synchronize with the availability of HD DVD software from Warner Bros. Toshiba has been touring the country with HD DVD demonstrations for several weeks in support of the hardware and software launch originally scheduled for March 28th. Warner Home Video, the only studio with titles officially scheduled to support the format's launch, recently announced that it would not be able to make that date with its HD DVD software. Warner is currently scheduled to release three titles on April 18th, and apparently Toshiba will have players ready on that date.

The ironies are already running thick with respect to the attempted launches by both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Blu-ray has long touted itself as the more robust, technologically advanced product. As a result, BD players are expensive to build, and will be $1000 and up at retail. The PlayStation3 has been delayed and industry speculation pins the problem on its implementation of Blu-ray as the disc drive system. HD DVD for its part, has made much of its easier to implement technology, which has been touted by HD DVD's proponents as being so similar to the current DVD standard the disc replication facilities can change over to HD DVD production in tens of minutes. And yet, the format's latest delays are due to technical difficulties from mastering discs with new audio and video compression codecs and copy protection standards.

Universal's UK Arm To Launch Movie Download Service With King Kong
The British arm of Universal Pictures is using the release of Peter Jackson's King Kong to launch a broadband movie distribution service in conjunction with the UK's version of Netflix, a rentals by mail operator called LOVEFiLM. The service is being called DTO for Download-To-Own, and will debut on April 10th with King Kong and will offer 35 films, including other titles available day and date with DVD releases. A top executive at Universal in the US was quoted as calling the UK venture a harbinger of things to come in other regions in the near future.

The LOVEFiLM DTO service will offer users two Windows Media Player downloads- one for a PC, and one for a portable device- and a copy of the single disc DVD for a single fee. There is no download only model available yet. According to Universal UK's Eddie Cunningham, market research showed that while their customers wanted downloads, a significant percentage of people still want to own a physical copy of the film as well. Cunningham was also quoted as stating that the deal with LOVEFiLM is nonexclusive and that Universal is open to dealing with other retailers and platforms, naming Apple's iTunes online music store. iTunes currently sells several Universal Pictures TV shows for $1.99 per episode.

With computer and broadband growth steadily expanding it's becoming more and more apparent that there will probably not be another physical disc format that will be as ubiquitous as the current DVD format so far as packaged media is concerned. Consumers will be presented with a growing number of convenient and inexpensive alternatives for movie delivery. At some point, as the Blu-ray and HD DVD factions wage their war with one another, it may occur to them that they're facing competition from many directions, not just from each other.