Better late than never: Paramount goes Blu (again)

[admin_exported]

Avoiding a full blown press conference, Paramount have quietly confirmed to the hollywoodreporter that they are indeed going back to Blu:

Paramount Home Entertainment quietly came onboard via a statement sent exclusively to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday: "We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer," the statement reads. "As we look to (begin) releasing our titles on Blu-ray, we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly."

No further details were given.

That makes it a clean sweep for Blu-ray with the major Hollywood studios.

 

[Anonymous]

Finally. You have to laugh at the manner of the press release.

 

[Anonymous]

Imagine being the guy responsible for moving them to HD-DVD, then having to go back and say "actually, we need to go back to Blu-Ray"....

 

[Anonymous]

I guess he can always say we got $150 million for six months work.

 

[Anonymous]

I can understand that being attractive to cover the cost of swapping from BD to HD-DVD, but it might be swallowed up covering the cost to swap back!

Obviously have no idea of the costs involved, but $150 million doesn't sound a lot for such a large organisation to make such a step change twice in one year.

I'd still be sweating if I was that guy, but then you could be right, they might have made a healthy profit.

I guess the real losers are the HD-DVD supporters that held out and got nothing at all

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's a shame for those folks, but to be honest I'd be surprise if anybody other than Universal (and maybe even them)wasn't doing a bit of bet hedging over the last three or four months. The wrtiting was so plainly on the wall that it would've made sound business sense to create options that could be shifted to, or run in parallel, should the (inevitable) shift happen.

My info from the inside is that the delay for the later switchers (no names......) was primarily due to legal reasons to do with the (alleged) payments made to them for supporting the format.

You can imagine the call from the corner office - "Hey Lawyer guy! How can we get outa this without either - a)revealing, or b) getting sued because of - the payout we got to support the goddam thing in the first place. I told 'em it was a baaaaaad idea. It's in my original email from week one! Memo to self. Send a copy of that to Mr R**stone immediately!"