Industry News
By Shane C. Buettner April 7, 2006 — Blu-ray Movies Scheduled For Release On May 23rd- Will There Be Anything To Play Them On?
Can there be a format war if neither side shows up? Samsung officially announced this week that its BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc (BD) player will not be released in time for the currently scheduled BD software introduction on May 23rd. The company will now launch the player on June 25th, claiming the delay is necessitated by a lack of software needed for compatibility tests of the players.

If this story sounds at all familiar, just this past month the rival HD DVD player launch was pushed back for three weeks due to difficulties mastering software. The Toshiba-backed format is now scheduled to launch players on April 18th, coincident with the release of Warner's first "wave" of three titles.

Amazingly, in reporting this delay Video Business cited a source at Sony claiming that the BD software launch will still commence on May 23rd. Since Sony has pushed PlayStation3 back to November, and its own standalone BD player is scheduled for release in July, I guess it's up to Pioneer to have a player ready by May 23rd!

Movielink and CinemaNow To Sell Movie Downloads
On Monday two Internet-based movie services, Movielink and CinemaNow, will begin to sell film downloads from six of Hollywood's major studios. Movielink is owned by Warner Brothers, and, in addition to peddling Warner Home Video releases, has signed download-to-own agreements with Sony Pictures, MGM, Paramount and 20th Century Fox. Nearly 300 movies will be offered by Movielink initially, including new releases such as Brokeback Mountain and the Jim Carry vehicle, Fun With Dick and Jane. More movies will follow in subsequent weeks.

CinemaNow has apparently inked similar deals with Sony and Lionsgate. CinemaNow's initial offering will be comprised of 85 movies, including the Oscar-winning Crash. CinemaNow's pricing will range from $9.95 for catalog films to $19.95 for new releases.

Movies are encoded using Microsoft's Windows Media and DRM software. CinemaNow claims a single movie will require about a gigabyte of hard drive space, which is barely one quarter of the space available on a single-layer DVD. With broadband Internet connections it's estimated that downloads will take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours to download.

While CinemaNow will allow consumers to play purchased movies on one computer, Movielink will allow purchased films to be copied to a DVD disc, downloaded to two other computers, and streamed throughout a networked home. Inexplicably, Movielink claims the burned DVDs cannot be played on conventional DVD players.

Do I even need to comment that services like this, which are sure to multiply, ought to serve as a wakeup call to the next-gen disc peddlers?