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Warner's Total HD discs at CES?

Warner may be unveiling its hybrid, double sided Blu-ray / HD DVD discs, dubbed Total HD at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week in Las Vegas. In an Interview with the New York Times, Warner chief executive and chairman, Barry M. Meyer, explained that the company has created the Total HD discs because while HD DVD and Blu-ray show no signs of going away anytime soon, consumers are still left baffled about the competing formats.

"The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats, and to make that not a negative for the consumer," said Meyer. "We [Warner] felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn't want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them."



The Sony-led Blu-ray camp and the Toshiba-led HD DVD camp failed to merge both formats into one unified next generation format, and now it appears that third party companies are looking to fill the gap. Beside this news about the Total HD discs, LG also plans to show a Blu-ray / HD DVD combo player at CES.

Source:
Hi-Def Digest

Written by: James Delahunty @ 4 Jan 2007 1:05

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• 4 comments

• 21Q

  This makes it resonable to buy it, that if one format goes under the other can still be played on the player.

  4.1.2007 02:25 #1

• hughjars

  Interesting.
  
  I wonder what's going to happen to the encoding as it is common knowledge in the av community that Warner's HD-DVD titles to date show a marked superiority to their Blu-ray releases.
  
  Nice to see.
  
  It's coming, this arguement over format is soon to be as significant as arguing the toss over DVD -R & DVD +R is today.
  
  .....which is a disaster for Blu-ray.

  4.1.2007 16:09 #2

• Steve83

  I hope this move scares the $#!+ out of both the HD & BR camps - the idea of the CONSUMER making the decision on what becomes the new standard, which is obviously what they've been terrified of from the beginning.

  7.1.2007 11:52 #3

• dvd_guy

  This is the dumbest idea EVER. All it will do is prolong the stupid format war. I can't imagine many other studios paying for the authoring to be done twice for each disc either. Stupid stupid stupid. The idea of dual-format discs becoming "standard" is even crazier than the format war itself. Warner, you should be ashamed.

  8.1.2007 11:37 #4