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Why Warner Brothers Is Almost Certain To Go Blu-ray Exclusive Early 2008
There is no doubt that Warner Brothers (WB) will be watching the sales of High Definition Media (HDM) very closely during the 4th Quarter of 2007. As most know WB is the last major movie studio to produce movies on both Blu-ray disc and HD DVD. WB publicly says they enjoy producing on both formats and that it is too early to pick a side. However, recently in an article at Twice.com Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders said the following: “We’ll see how the fourth quarter plays out. The consumer is still kind of divided, and we still believe that we should offer the content in both formats. Now, we will watch the marketplace very closely, and see how it plays out.” This clearly shows that WB will be watching the sales of common releases of WB titles on both HD formats. Some of the common WB releases coming in the 4th Quarter are:
Sanders also went on to state the following about Blu-ray disc specifically: “We have 60 titles released in Blu-ray already and we will be cranking that up further. We are just thrilled at how well they’ve been doing. Our top seller to date has been “300,” and before that it was “Planet Earth,” and before that was “The Departed.” We have had the top-selling HD title since we released “The Departed” at the Oscars.” Following the enthusiasm that WB is showing towards Blu-ray, WB’s sister company, New Line Cinema recently announced that they will release the majority of their Day/Date releases exclusively on Blu-ray for a period of 3 to 6 months prior to releasing on HD DVD. This means recent box-office successes such as “Hairspray” and “Rush Hour 3” will be exclusively available on Blu-ray for up to half a year. Another area which may be pushing WB to go Blu-ray exclusive is Blu-ray’s technical superiority. Currently Blu-ray discs are capable of storing 50GB of data whereas HD DVD is only capable of storing 30GB of data. This has forced WB to produce its product to fit on 30GB discs so that they can continue to release on both formats. As one can imagine, this has created a lot of frustration in the Blu-ray camp as many Blu-ray supporters have had to deal with the inferior HD DVD encode copied to the Blu-ray format.
The lack of space of which HD DVD offers has also lead to movies such as “Alexander” needing to be spaced out over two discs due to the length of the film. If this film was encoded specifically for Blu-ray, there would be no need for two discs as it could easily fit on one disc with a lossless soundtrack. It is rumored that several WB executives are frustrated by this deficiency with HD DVD as it increases production costs (Need for 2 discs vs. 1 disc) and lowers their return on investment. We here at blu-crew.com feel the 4th Quarter of 2007 will be a very telling time for the format war and we feel that if Blu-ray maintains or even increases its current sales dominance of WB products that WB will move to Blu-ray exclusivity in early 2008.
See current rank and price statistics comparisons for Warner titles. Blu-ray Disc - The Superior Format Blu-ray Disc is truly the next generation format for the entertainment industry. Why Warner Brothers Is Almost Certain To Go Blu-ray Exclusive In Early 2008 There is no doubt that Warner Brothers (WB) will be watching the sales of High Definition
Media (HDM) very closely during the 4th Quarter of 2007.
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