Disney CEO calls Blu-ray victory a "foregone conclusion"

[admin]

During an investment meeting, Disney's Robert Iger declared the HD format war was essentially over, causing a mixed reaction from the other attending studio execs.

The most vocal advocate of Blu-ray was Disney, according to a report from the Associated Press. Iger was quoted as saying the format's success was a "foregone conclusion". Above that, he criticized other studios for not following in its same footsteps. "It's disappointing that the industry hasn't managed to be cohesive," he said.

Meanwhile, News Corp CEO sided with Iger and claimed it was obvious that Blu-ray was a better format. "The public can tell the difference," he said. News Corp owns 20th Century Fox, which is also a Blu-ray-exclusive studio.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33963/97/

So studios like Univeral and Paramount that has exclusive support for one format means the industry hasn't manged to be cohesive, then what exactly has Disney done? That's right: exclusively support the other format, from day one.

As for victory being a "foregone conclusion", then why is the Blu-ray camp spending so much money still on promoting Blu-ray, if it already has won as it has claimed before (but now changed to "will win"). Tell that to the millions of HD DVD owners, who will be watching exclusive titles like "The Bourne Ultimatum", "Shrek The Third" and "Transformers" on their "dying" format.

As for "The public can tell the difference" statement, yes, I'm sure the public can tell the difference. HD DVD and Blu-ray are identical in terms of video/audio quality, and the only difference is that HD DVD supports picture-in-picture, Internet content downloads, and sophisticated interactive features, while Blu-ray profile 1.0 players (the majority of them sold) do not, but they do have support for even more DRM and region coding.

Sorry for the rant at Blu-ray. They make me so mad sometimes, mainly because they come out with stupid statements like this that totally ignore reality and their own customers.

[blutach]

Of course, BR has BD+. The public can tell the difference!

Regards

[Chewy]

BD+ is effectively a small virtual machine embedded in authorized players. It allows content providers to include executable programs on Blu-ray Discs. Such programs can:[13]

examine the host environment, to see if the player has been tampered with. Every licensed playback device manufacturer must provide the BD+ licensing authority with memory footprints that identify their devices.
verify that the player's keys have not been changed.
execute native code, possibly to patch an otherwise insecure system.
transform the audio and video output. Parts of the content will not be viewable without letting the BD+-program unscramble it.
If a playback device manufacturer finds that its devices have been hacked, it can potentially release BD+-code that detects and circumvents the vulnerability. These programs can then be included in all new content releases.

The specifications of the BD+ virtual machine are only available to licensed device manufacturers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

they have been watching too many spy movies

[ulTRAX]

These pointless and wasteful format wars are examples of capitalism at its most pathological.