On one level it makes sense that the sixth season of The Sopranos has been announced as the first TV show to make it to HD-DVD. The writing, acting and production values are all motion picture quality, and this most recent season has been no exception. It’s only peers are Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica, and neither of them have been doing for nearly as long — and we already know that Deadwood won’t.

Given the combination of quality and longevity, it may just be the best TV Drama ever, so it’s kind of fitting that it’s the first one to make the hi-def jump.

However, there is one small problem: the price. $129.95. It makes one wonder if HBO has contracted out to Tony and the rest of his New Jersey gang to whack HD-DVD once and for all.

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We’ve made a lot of fun of the HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray format wars, and rightly so. After all, it’s very entertaining to point out the parallels to VHS vs. Beta, and — more ominiously — SACD vs. HDCD (everybody say “huh?”); the troubles getting product to consumers and the possibility of no backwards compatibility with older HD TVs.

Obviously, watching high-definition films in the privacy of your own home is such a perfect 21st century idea I guess it’s no wonder that more than one consortium of evil multinational technology and entertainment companies had it at roughly the same time.

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Warner Home Video, the only studio which had a firm release date for any HD DVD titles — March 28 — has now told retailers that the date isn’t so firm after all. Worse yet, they really aren’t sure when they’re gonna release those titles.

“To be honest, the outlook is tenuous — we’re still coming out with an initial slate, but we may be a week or two later; we just don’t know,” division president Ron Sanders said.

Translation: don’t look for any HD-DVD movies before Easter, or maybe even Memorial Day. Fourth of July? Meanwhile, the big mass market retailers are reportedly canceling pre-orders and changing ad campaigns to compensate for the lack of product. And no other studios had even announced actual release dates. Even without the format wars, this would be a less than auspicious beginning.
Meanwhile, Toshiba, the only manufacturer to even make the players right now (though LG just announced their dual player), is going to be all dressed up with nowhere to go.

And nowhere seems to be where the format is headed right now.

• A blurry picture for HD-DVD as launch nears
• HD DVD likely be a sluggish start with no movies for the launch
• LG to deliver dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray

Technorati Tags: HD DVD, Blu-ray, Toshiba, LG, Warner Home Video

I’m going to tell you a little secret: Hollywood is in a state of panic (it’s also in California, but that’s another issue). Those of you who have been paying attention have surely noted that the new media is moving at warp speed. Now you could say, in the studios’ defense, that this rapid turn of events has been, well, rapid, but the Dawn of the New Media has been predicted since Amazon.com sold its first book.

Hollywood has been actively digitizing product for years now. Every studio has been scrubbing and remastering and relicensing music in anticipation of a digital windfall. Maybe it’s that DVD has been so dominant, so profitable for so long, but the studios remain unprepared for the future. Item Number Ten on the Absolute Value analysis of Google’s Analyst Slide Show asks the question that has Hollywood biting its nails:

Do you know exactly how many assets you have? By assets, I mean all the content you’ve ever owned or created. Do you know exactly? Do you have the count? (Remember, I’m a computer scientist. I have to ask these things.)

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Because we love nothing more than to watch major corporations kill a good idea with a bunch of petty squabbling, here is some of the recent news on the HD DVD front . . .

Philips to Introduce Blu-ray Disc Products and Media - Philips is, of course, one of the big Blu-ray heavyweights, and they are going to announce a player, a PC drive and new writable media. None of which, of course, will be inexpensive.
Subpar wars: high-resolution-disc formats fight each other, consumers push back - Here’s a hardcore techhie look at both formats, the issues surrounding the formats, and why the copy protection schemes could sink both.

Toshiba Plans HD DVD Marketing Blitz: Because nothing says “please choose our next generation HD DVD format over Sony’s” like a tour of the United States. Tickets are available at Tickmaster, I guess. This major corporation’s tour is sponsored, strangely enough, by The Rolling Stones.

LG Kills Blu-ray model, considers combo player - Just two months after showing it off at CES, LG has decided to kill its Blu-ray only HD DVD player, considering a dual-format player, instead. This might be the type of thinking that will actually save HD DVD: keeping the fallout of the format wars away from the consumer. Y’all remember the consumer, right? Right?

Technorati Tags: HD DVD, Blu-Ray, Sony, LG, Philips, DVD Player, Toshiba

This week, Sony announced that the wholesale price points for DVDs in their new High-Definition Blu-Ray format will be between $18-$24. This is in line with the price points for the new High-Definition HD DVD titles from Warner Home Video. That’s the only good news for consumers in this whole Hi-Def DVD war: the fact that the prices for these higher-quality discs will be much lower than they otherwise would have charged.

Sigh. 20 years later, and nobody has learned a goddammed thing: two competing video formats, sponsored by warring big-moneyed camps, and — if history repeats itself and one format reigns supreme in the marketplace — the big loser will be the film buff who stocks up on that eventual losing format. So bollocks to all of them: this film buff — who already has hundreds of DVDs and would be a natural and even eager target audience for High Def DVD — is staying far away from all of it. And I’m guessing that I won’t be the only one.

• Sony prices Blu-ray discs at $30