tonymontana313

The initial part of the article stated that Walmart was leaning towards blu-ray. You had initially made it sound that Walmart was exclusively working on a deal with Toshiba.

Gizmo

Edit: Eh, not worth it.

Giles

if Toshiba and WB really do give Walmart money they don't deserve - I'll boycott. But again if Walmart were that stupid not to stock HD-DVD and not carry 'Transformers' then they really are the douchebrains they originally are.

PopcornTreeCt

I've been "boycotting" Wal-Mart for a long time but that has more to do with the people that shop there.

Giles

rent the documentary 'Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price' it's really a sickening depressing revealing look into Walmart and how they royally fuck with their employees and their suppliers all in the name of low price.

speedyray

Boy wouldn't WB going HD DVD exclusive turn the tide. I mean really, you get the big three vs. Sony, FOX and Disney with each team having some smaller supporting studios. HD DVD will rule catalog, but 90s and newer may go to the BD side. Weird. Waiting for a concrete announcement. If this happened, 3 of the big 5 for Christmas would be HD DVD exclusive. Think Target may be second guessing that very early choice.

Harry Lime

Well, if Warner decides to go HD-DVD the Hi Def market will become the SACD/DVD Audio of the film industry. Cause HD-DVD will have Universal, Paramount, and Warner and Blu-ray will have Disney, Fox, MGM, and Sony.
Everyone knows Sony will never cross over. Fox wont go HD-DVD either cause of the region free aspect of HD, neither will MGM cause fox releases their films, and Disney as spent millions pushing BD that it wont be likely that they will cross either.

After the contract period for Warner and Paramount they will probably both go back to neutral and we will be back to where we were and by that time consumers wont give two shits.

I say this cause I believe that the format war does more bad things then good but I know some think the format war is a good thing so they probably have different theory.

Gizmo

Funny, I remember Fox and Disney releasing on Divx back in the day too.
Sony will stick with Blu-ray until PS6, thats just Sony.

pro-bassoonist

Now that it has been confirmed that Tosh's offer to WB is old news (WB rejected it sometime ago ) I would rather concentrate on the this fact:

Why is it that WB only attended the BLU-RAY press conference at the IFA? Somehow they missed the memo that the HDDVD group also had one?

I'd rather ponder facts than read through rumors.

Ciao,
Pro-B

Supermallet

But any pondering you do ends up being conjecture, anyway. Until WB announces something, they're format neutral.

Gizmo

Because if WB did not show up at the Blu-ray conference I'm sure Blu-ray.com would explode. I'm not too worried about HD DVD switching sides due to the fact P/DW is not in the HD DVD camp.

Edit: Crap. I didn't mean to respond to your comments. Ugh. Stupid Alcohol.

ResIpsa

Actually, what is obvious is that you can't refute my substantive point, hence your need to resort to name calling and cheap one-liners.

Burnt Thru

could u provide a link to this confirmation please pro-b? steve nickerson, a pretty strong hd dvd advocate, left his job as head of highdef at warner brothers not long ago. it would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between the dates of these things happening.

Mr. Cinema

I thought Steve Nickerson was a strong advocate of totalHD/both formats.

also, wasn't LionsGate absent from the BD conference at IFA?

Adam Tyner

He's referencing either the update on The Digital Bits or "WickyWoo" on Blu-ray.com.

It's not really "confirmation", though. Bill and WickyWoo both point to some anonymous sources, and Bill's 'apparently' in the statement sounds hesitant enough that I wouldn't take it as gospel.

If this sort of deal were in the works -- at any studio, really -- no one would admit to it. It very well may be old news, but we have no way of knowing one way or the other. WickyWoo says that the offer was made at the same time as the one to Paramount, so those labeling this as "ancient history", if this has indeed come and gone, are exaggerating. Even if those guys' sources are correct and a deal with the HD DVD camp was passed on, do we know that that's the only deal? Again, I'm not saying they're wrong, but we don't have a way of knowing for sure.

Lionsgate wasn't at IFA, but IFA is a European-centric trade show, and Lionsgate, as far as I know, only distributes in North America. There's no reason for Lionsgate to have been there.

Burnt Thru

thanks adam.

steve made quite a few predictions over the last year or so, all of which seemed to favour hd dvd very strongly, and none of which came close to the eventual reality. i don't have the link now but his sales predictions for hd dvd and bd were wildly off the mark, and heavily favoured hd dvd. word in the industry is that warner brothers were told to go neutral by their parent company time warner, and that they otherwise were not inclined to take that decision.

Qui Gon Jim

Not trying to hijack here, but do you honestly think Target is that much better? Their veneer is a bit shinier but deep down they aren't that different.

Giles

honestly - I would hope so, but I don't think Target is that blatant about it's shortcomings and flaws as Walmart is.

Josh Z

The only thing this demonstrates is that the BDA asked all of its remaining studios to go to IFA to put on a show of solidarity after the Paramount announcement.

The HD DVD camp obviously didn't feel they needed to do that, because they had big enough news to crow about with Paramount.

Burnt Thru

is this sort of comment really necessary?

kvrdave

I am guessing it is like all other documentaries that just exist to bash someone. I don't like walmart, but I am begining to dislike all documentaries even more. The kvrdave Story: Why Dogs Deserve to Die would probably make a lot of people hate dogs, but it would be one sided, gloss over problems with the premise, and mislead. Well, that's what people who disagreed would say, anyway.

tonymontana313

I just read that WB has a stake in BR patents. Is that true?

Adam Tyner

I agree. Let's keep it a little more civil.

Shannon Nutt

Well, Bill is both right and wrong. He's right that Warners has accepted no such deal, but he's wrong in saying it's "old news" and off the table. It's only "old news" in the sense that the offer was made a while back and not recently. He also fails to report that Sony has been trying to lure Warners to Blu-ray with a similar deal.

Don't know if it's been touched upon here, but I've heard a rumor that Warners may "test the waters" by taking some upcoming releases and making them HD DVD only.

Damed

They are a member of the BDA, so maybe.

I DO know that they are one of the FOUNDING MEMBERS of the DVD Forum, thus they certainly get some sort of kickback from HD DVD.