Mavs in 3-D ... Other Alternative Digital Content ... HD DVD Credits

- Tomorrow night's Mavs/Clippers game will be broadcast live in 3-D to one Landmark Theater in Dallas. They're using the Fusion 3-D camera system developed by Sony, James Cameron, and Vince Pace.

- The NY Times wrote yesterday about non-movie content in movie theaters. There's apparently a boomlet happening. From the story:

Chains in Tennessee and New Jersey sell $25 tickets to performances of La Scala operas. AMC and Regal, two of North America’s biggest chains, have promoted concerts (Celine Dion), marathons of classic TV shows (“Star Trek”) and seasonal events (the St. Olaf Christmas Festival). On April 24, hundreds of theaters are scheduled to show highlights from the Drum Corps International World Championships.

Few think nonmovie content will supplant movies as the primary reason people trek to the multiplex. Rather, the hope is that all the niche offerings will add up to steady supplemental income.

This is the kind of stuff that wasn't possible before digital cinema...

- People who bought HD DVD players from Best Buy and Circuit City can return them for store credits or gift cards, the Times' Bits blog reports.

For Your Consideration: Low-Budget Blockbusters ... Toshiba Exec Reflects on HD DVD ... Theaters Evolve

- Low-budget blockbusters like 'Once' never happen ... until they do. (Movie industry insiders say it's always safer to bet on big budget releases with well-known stars.) Portfolio.com has an analysis of the economics of 'Once,' made for $150,000 and released in the US by Fox Searchlight. The financial returns thus far, Portfolio says, have hit about 10,000 percent. From the story:

After the film opened in the U.S., it grew slowly and steadily. Fox Searchlight had the best marketing that money can’t buy: word-of-mouth buzz and critical acclaim. While summer’s blockbusters came and went, Once stuck around theaters for an amazing 219 days—most of 2007—whereas Spider-Man and Pirates played for 112 and 133 days, respectively.

There's also a slideshow of the top ten movies from a return-on-investment perspective (mostly indies like 'Blair Witch' and 'Napoleon Dynamite,' but all three 'Lord of the Rings' films also make the list.)

- Toshiba's CEO talks to the Wall Street Journal about the impact to the company of losing the high-def format war to Sony and Blu-ray. Atsutoshi Nishida says:

I didn't think we stood a chance after Warner left us because it meant HD DVD would have just 20% to 30% of software market share. One has to take calculated risks in business, but it's also important to switch gears immediately if you think your decision was wrong. We were doing this to win, and if we weren't going to win then we had to pull out, especially since consumers were already asking for a single standard.

- The Detroit News writes about how movie theaters are evolving -- with a big focus on 3-D, live concerts, and videogame tournaments. (Long interviewed me for the piece, and includes a short quote.)Fox

The final post about the Blu-ray / HD DVD format war?

The final nails were hammered into HD DVD's coffin this week, with Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart deciding to stock only Blu-ray discs and players.

Here's an obituary from today's NY Times.

From the Times piece:

Thus far, consumers have purchased about one million Blu-ray players, though there are another three million in the market that are integrated into the PlayStation 3 consoles of Sony, said Richard Doherty, research director of Envisioneering, a technology assessment firm. About one million HD DVD players have been sold.

Evenly matched by Blu-ray through 2007, HD DVD experienced a marked reversal in fortune in early January when Warner Brothers studio, a unit of Time Warner, announced it would manufacture and distribute movies only in Blu-ray. With the Warner decision, the Blu-ray coalition controlled around 75 percent of the high-definition content from the major movie and TV studios. The coalition includes Sharp, Panasonic and Philips as well as Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox studios.

ZDNet covers the Netflix and Best Buy decisions from earlier in the week.

Earlier, people had predicted that Sony's PlayStation 3, which included a Blu-ray player, would help Blu-ray edge ahead. Others thought that the availability of X-rated movies on HD DVD, or that format's cheaper equipment, would help it win. HD DVD was also the first to hit the market, in the spring of 2006.

Right now, though, it looks like Warner Bros. helped break the tie between the two formats in January, by announcing that it'd release movies only in the Blu-ray format; the studio had previously been releasing in both Blu-ray and HD DVD. History, of course, may eventually reveal that some other force was involved (conspiracy theorists imagine a giant payment to Warner Bros. from Blu-ray patent holder Sony Electronics, for instance).

It's interesting to me that it was Warner Bros. that helped make sure the studios coalesced around the original standard-definition DVD format in the 1990s... and that the Warner Bros. executive who led that effort, Warren Lieberfarb, wound up as a consultant for the HD DVD camp this time around.

Blu-ray Triumphant: News Round-up, and What Happens Next

So the rumors were true: Warner Bros., which dominates the home video biz, is going to exclusively release movies in the Blu-ray format as of June 1st.

My take: after trying to introduce a disc that would carry both formats last January (TotalHD, which didn't get traction), Warner Bros. realized it just had to pick a side to get high-def discs adopted. A Variety story had the most revealing WB quote in it: the studio realized that consumers were buying high-def TVs, but because of the confusion between Blu-ray and HD DVD, they weren't getting new DVD players to go with them. From the piece:

"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger," Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer seconded.

Essentially, every day matters now. Digital delivery of high-def movies is becoming a viable option. High-def is starting to show up on some Internet movie sites...and some next-generation set-top boxes like Vudu (iTunes and Apple TV in HD probably aren't far behind). Studios probably don't have a decade to squeeze nice profits out of Blu-ray disc releases, as they enjoyed with the original DVD format.

I expect by this Christmas, consumers will realize that the skirmish between Blu-ray and HD DVD is over, and start buying Blu-ray players in respectable (though probably not overwhelming) numbers. I'd love to hear your comments below...

The headlines:

- DVD format war appears to be over, from the LA Times

- Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle, from the NY Times

- Warners sides with Blu-ray in high-def disc battle, from The Hollywood Reporter

- Warner Bros. Backs Blu-ray, from Variety

- Blu-ray Lands a Big Fish: Warner, from the Wall Street Journal

Netflix and LG announce a hybrid set-top box

A lot of folks I've spoken to lately are pessimistic that any stand-alone set-top box can make a dent in the market...including products from Apple, Vudu, or Building B. These people are of the opinion that the only boxes that can succeed are those deployed by cable and satellite companies.

I have a sense, though, that one way to succeed in the stand-alone set-top box market is to sell a hybrid box ... one that slices and dices, serving several two (or more) purposes. I own a Toshiba-made box, for instance, that plays DVDs and acts as a TiVo. What would get me thinking about upgrading? A new box that plays high-def DVDs, sucks down Internet video, and also acts as a TiVo.

Netflix and LG Electronics are heading in this hybrid direction with their announcement today that new boxes from LG will support streaming movies, delivered over the Net, from Netflix's service. CNet says the box will also play Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. From that story:

[Netflix CEO Reed] Hastings said the LG partnership was the first of many such deals for Netflix. "We'd like to see a hundred Netflix-capable boxes," he said, noting he also was exploring partnerships with makers of Internet-connected game consoles, cable and satellite companies.

Netflix has about 6000 movies available for streaming today, compared with 90,000 DVDs available for rental, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In the NY Times coverage, Hastings says, “Eventually, as TVs have wireless connectivity built into them, we’ll integrate right into the television.”

New Year Linkage

- The LA Times lists the best and worst online marketing gimmicks of 2007.

- Fortune mentions Blowtorch as an example of an innovative entertainment company. From the story:

Having nailed down exhibition deals with 600 theaters near college campuses, Blowtorch has an edge over other would-be film companies: hard-to-get space on the silver screen. You'll hear a lot of clicking in the theater on Blowtorch nights. A typical evening might feature a festival of user-generated short films built around a theme - skateboarding, say, or football, or tango. People in the audience will be encouraged to pick up their cellphones or fire up their laptops to vote, text each other, and send messages to the producers - all while the show is rolling. The short film that gets the most votes is screened with the next Blowtorch feature or included in a DVD. The first Blowtorch movie, a twentysomething comedy called You Are Here, debuts in April.

The Blowtorch site is here.

- Mike Curtis deconstructs the latest article about the Blu-ray/HD DVD stalemate, from the NY Times.

- Bill Mead looks at the state of digital cinema in Asia in Film Journal International. (Bill is the editor of DCinemaToday.com.)

- Anne Thompson points us to a story in the LA Times about the marketing of 'Be Kind Rewind,' starring Jack Black and Mos Def.

Thursday links: Rentals on iTunes? ... Viral video picks ... Predictions

- Reuters and The Wall Street Journal say Apple may bring Fox movies into the iTunes universe -- as rentals only. This is likely something that'd be announced at Macworld next month in San Francisco. From the Journal's story:

Apple has for months been trying to persuade the Hollywood studios to agree to a digital rental model, in which consumers would be able to download movies through iTunes that could be played for a limited time. Until now, no studio has agreed to such a deal with Apple, and some companies have continued to resist Apple's pitch.

What do you think the pricing will be? I'm guessing $2.99. And hopefully Apple will make the other terms less frustrating than they've been on other online rental sites... as far as how much time you've got to start and finish watching the movie.

- The LA Times has put together a list (this is what journalists do at the end of the year, when no one is around the be interviewed) of 2007's best viral videos.

- The Hollywood Reporter makes eight predictions for 2008. The most interesting to CinemaTech readers:

1. NBC will return to iTunes with its content priced slightly higher than before.
2. A major studio will try releasing one of its movies simultaneously in theaters and on pay-per-view TV.
3. Blu-ray wins the high-definition disc wars.

Some mid-week linkage: ILM, Sam Raimi, Michael Bay, and More

- For about a week, the blog world has been buzzing about this post from director Michael Bay, alleging that Microsoft is trying to slow down adoption of either high-def DVD format so that it'll have time to corner the market on digital downloads.

I think the theory is a bit off. First of all, Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, where it sells digital downloads, is still an unknown quantity -- the company has never announced how many movies and TV shows it has sold there (unlike Apple with iTunes). Second of all, if you wanted to propagate conspiracy theories, why wouldn't you suggest that Apple is trying to hamstring high-def discs? It's iTunes Store is the dominant place for buying downloads, and Apple has yet to ship a computer that can play either Blu-ray or HD DVD discs.

- Industrial Light & Magic says it wants to work on lower-budget projects. What's a shoestring pic to the San Francisco-based VFX topdog? $35 to $40 million, according to Variety.

- Director Sam Raimi talks visual effects in another Variety piece. (I have a soft spot for Raimi, since in his 'Dark Man' days, he was the first director I ever interviewed.) He says:

No director is ever done with their film. Now the director has the necessity and opportunity to keep directing the film, not just for the shooting period of three months, but on a longer picture, maybe for an entire year or on a 'Spider-Man' film for 2½ frickin' years straight. And it's hard. It's exhausting. You can keep redirecting this shot forever. It's an opportunity to work yourself to death.

- Lots of cool video on the promo site for the new Indiana Jones movie... but no way to embed it in a blog, or link directly to an interesting clip. That makes it harder for bloggers and fans to promote the movie on their sites.

- Wall Street Journal reports on Internet-connected set-top boxes, which aren't yet getting traction in the market. Nick Wingfield writes:

What's the holdup? Generally speaking, the video players are just too complicated to hook up, too expensive and too limited in what they can do. There are skeptics, too, who think Internet video players are trying to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist -- especially as cable companies enhance on-demand video services.

...Still, tech companies can't stay away from the idea, because of the booming popularity of Internet video. In August, Internet users in the U.S. viewed 9.13 billion online videos, up 26% from 7.24 billion in January, estimates research firm comScore Inc.

Users watched more than a quarter of those videos on Google Inc.'s YouTube, but online video from traditional entertainment companies is exploding, too.

Post-Thanksgiving Linkage: Blockbuster Kiosks, Streaming Video Piracy, Speed Racer, Vudu

- Blockbuster is gonna try putting automated movie rental kiosks into Papa John's pizza joints and Family Dollar stores. DVDs will rent for just a buck, cheaper than at Blockbuster's traditional outlets, and they can be returned to any kiosk -- not just the one they came from.

- Slate has a great piece on a new kind of online movie piracy. Dan Morrell writes:

As the MPAA has focused on BitTorrent downloading, however, a newer, more popular kind of piracy method has come along. BitTorrent is out. Streaming video is in.

Before it was shuttered by European authorities in October, the British-based TVLinks—which offered links to hundreds of pirated movies and television shows—had become perhaps the Web's leading destination for illicit streaming video. If you've never heard of it, you're not alone: A LexisNexis search found only four mentions of TVLinks in major news sources over the past year. The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular torrent Web sites, was cited more than 300 times. The lack of hype didn't stop the site's spread. According to Web traffic analyzer Alexa, TVLinks passed both the Pirate Bay and TorrentSpy in global traffic rank this August. At the height of its popularity, TVLinks ranked 160th in global traffic, near the level of the New York Times.

- Looks like the Wachowski Brothers are taking the green screen approach with 'Speed Racer.'

- To help market its $399 set-top box, Vudu is throwing in high-def copies of two of Universal's 'Bourne' movies. (Here's more on Vudu.)

- My mother-in-law asked me on Thanksgiving for my advice on whether she should buy "a Blu-ray." When I mentioned the format war, she didn't seem aware of it, and she didn't seem to have much recognition that HD DVD existed. She and my father-in-law are big Netflix users, and Netflix offers movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD, so I told her the only possible problem could be if HD DVD wins, they'd need to buy a new DVD player in a couple years. Just a data point...

Blu-ray and HD exclusives aren't so exclusive overseas

The Wall Street Journal discovers an interesting loophole that's being exploited by the brave owners of HD DVD or Blu-ray disc players: apparently, some discs that are exclusive to one format in the US are available in the other format in international versions.

From Sarah McBride's story:

...Several dozen titles out in the U.S. exclusively on Blu-ray are available overseas on HD DVD. While studios like Sony, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney Co. tout their unswerving allegiance to Blu-ray stateside, in other countries titles like Sony's "xXx," Fox's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and Disney's "The Prestige" are available on HD DVD.

No overseas travel is necessary to tap into this stream of alternative discs. A visit to a site like amazon.co.uk does the trick, albeit typically at a higher price than in the U.S. For those reluctant to pay shipping costs from Europe or Asia or worried about currency conversions, gray-market U.S.-based sites such as xploitedcinema.com offer selections.

The loophole lies in distribution. Studios often farm out DVD sales in other countries to a patchwork of companies with expertise in those markets. Those partner companies sometimes have arrangements to use a high-definition format different from that of the U.S. studio.

EchoStar Buys Sling Media ... Blu-ray Sells More Discs, HD DVD More Players ... 'The Tribe,' Available Soon on iTunes

- EchoStar, the parent of the Dish Network, is paying $380 million for Sling Media. Sling makes the Slingbox, which can send live TV broadcasts and DVR content from your home to any Internet-connected computer (and even to many cell phones).

- In an update on the high-def disc wars, the Wall Street Journal says HD DVD has about 58 percent of hardware sales, but Blu-ray discs are outselling HD discs by 2-to-1 this year. What does that mean? I guess Blu-ray player owners are just buying more discs than their HD DVD neighbors.

Sarah McBride writes:

The upshot: Both formats remain viable. And even though consumers can get free movies when they purchase a player, millions of people are sitting on the sidelines, their wallets untouched.

- "The Tribe," a short film on the connection between Barbie dolls and Judaism, will start selling on iTunes next week, according to filmmaker Tiffany Shlain's Web site. (It played at Sundance in 2006.) That makes it one of the first indie films to show up on iTunes without going through an aggregator like Shorts International. It'll sell for $1.99. Shlain worked directly with Apple on the arrangement.

Monday News: Internet Video, High-Def Formats, Hulu Lawsuit, and More

The NY Times has a bunch of Internet video stories today...

- Warner Bros. is creating original Web video series, and hopes to sell advertising around them.

- A profile of the attorney who cut the lucrative new 'South Park' deal

- The self-publishing site Lulu.com is suing Hulu, the new Web video site created by News Corp. and NBC, because its name is too similar.

The LA Times says there's no end in sight to the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war, which some had predicted would be over by Christmas. From the piece:

The brinkmanship is intensifying. Another major studio, Warner Bros., is being courted by both camps and believed to be mulling over a lucrative offer that could bring such popular titles as "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" into the HD DVD camp, according to Hollywood insiders who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential.

"Any movement by one of the studios tilts the playing field in one direction or the other," said David Sanderson, head of the global media practice at consulting firm Bain & Co. "It's a bit of jump ball right now."

What's more, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the dominant seller of DVDs, has been contemplating whether to boot stand-alone HD DVD players from its shelves in favor of Blu-ray. Wal-Mart executives would not talk about the company's conversations with suppliers, but said it would continue to carry hardware and software in both formats until consumers indicate a clear preference.

- IFC and a tech start-up called B Side are working together to get home video and online distribution for movies that garner good buzz at film festivals, but don't get distribution deals, according to Variety.

HD DVD's Last Ditch Effort?

Today's news that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation will release movies in HD DVD only feels like a last-ditch effort to give HD DVD a leg up over Blu-ray...especially because financial incentives are involved, and especially because the exclusive agreement could be for as short as a year.

From Brooks Barnes' NY Times coverage:

...Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified.

The incentives will come in a combination of cash and promotional guarantees. Toshiba, for instance, will use the release of “Shrek the Third” as part of an HD DVD marketing campaign.

In the Wall Street Journal, Sarah McBride writes:

The exclusive could be for as little as a year, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The studios won undisclosed financial incentives for exclusive commitments to release high-definition movies onto HD DVD only. A person familiar with the situation said the incentives included both cash payments and soft incentives such as marketing promotions.

...Prices for hardware to play each of the dueling formats are dropping. Toshiba HD DVD players are now available for less than $300, compared with about $449 for the least-expensive Blu-ray player. The combination of the less expensive players and the hot titles that will be available on HD DVD could help steer many consumers in that direction over the key holiday sales period.

Variety notes that as recently as March, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had been non-plussed by high-def discs in general. Daniel Frankel and Ben Fritz write:

"Blu-Ray and HD DVD are a niche business," [Katzenberg] said in March on a conference call with Wall Street analysts. "They're not going to become the next platform. I think for the general consumer, there is not a big enough delta between the standard DVD in terms of where it is today and the next generation."

That's a far cry from the statement he put out on Monday: "We believe the combination of this year's low-priced HD DVD players and the commitment to release a significant number of hit titles in the fall makes HD DVD the best way to view movies at home."

Lotsa Tuesday Links: Mark Cuban + Video...Unbox + TiVo...Technicolor + Satellites...Warner + Total HD...Spielberg + EA...And More

- Mark Cuban has some hypotheses about the value of video. Number 5 is especially interesting, and one thing I've been focusing on in my presentations and panel discussions lately:

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

- TiVo users can now order Amazon Unbox movies directly from their television set, rather than from a Web-connected computer.

- Technicolor Digital Cinema says 'Transformers' is the first movie sent by satellite to theaters in the US and Europe.

- Warner's Total HD discs, which offer a movie in Blu-ray format on one side and HD DVD on the other, have been delayed until 2008. Is that the same thing as dead in the water?

- The Wall Street Journal reports on what Spielberg has been working on in his partnership with videogame developer Electronic Arts.

- A fun story about copyright squabbles on YouTube; in the case of Uri Geller, the site may actually have been too quick in removing a video from its library.

- The schedule for Comic-Con 2007.

Thursday links: Netflix May Be Prepping a Set-Top Box ... Thwarting Piracy (and Consumers) ... Soderbergh Psyched About Red Camera

Some post-holiday links for ya...

- Netflix may be planning to roll out a $50 set-top box that'd pull movies down from the Net and let you watch them on your TV.

- The Wall Street Journal reports on a new strategy for thwarting hackers trying to crack the encryption on high-def discs played on computers. Unfortunately, it may also stymie consumers who've bought the discs and simply want to use them. Note: this only applies right now to watching high-def discs on a computer. From the story:

The anticopying protection for high-resolution DVDs relies on secret, 128-digit passwords embedded in the hardware or software used to play DVDs. Under its new " key-revocation strategy, Hollywood and its allies in the high-technology industry start with the assumption that enterprising hackers will eventually decipher the passwords, which can then be used to make copies.

But once a password is compromised and posted on the Web, the industry answers by changing the way in which its new DVD titles are made. Anyone who pops one of the new discs into their personal computer without installing a software upgrade will find that it destroys the computer's ability to play any high-definition DVD at all. To restore the computer's ability to play them again, the owner is forced to download new software from the Web -- software with a new password that hackers haven't yet discovered. The old password, or key, has been revoked.

The self-destruct signal affects player software for both formats for high-definition DVDs -- HD-DVD and Blu-ray -- not hardware players hooked up to TVs. The effect could be bewildering to a customer not used to downloading frequent updates over the Internet.

- Director Steven Soderbergh is apparently impressed with the Red One digital camera. From his comment to Red founder Jim Jannard: "This is the camera I've been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand."

Monday Links: Costner on the Web ... CustomFlix to Support HD DVD ... New Edition of Film Financing Book ... And More

- This is an interesting model: Kevin Costner is financing an animated Web series called "The Explorer's Club." It'll debut later this year, as 12 four-minute episodes, with Costner's voice. The goal is to later turn "The Explorer's Club" into a live-action feature. This approach uses the Internet as a proving ground for new characters and stories, before committing to make a feature -- something I think we'll soon see a lot more of.

- CustomFlix, part of Amazon.com, will now accept indie films in high definition, and sell them in the HD DVD format, according to the NY Times. From the story: "The company said it would waive processing fees for the first 1,000 films it accepts for production by its CustomFlix Labs subsidiary."

- Via Lance Weiler's WorkbookProject Web site, I learned about a new edition of The Film Finance Handbook. They're offering a free chapter online, too, which deals with using the Net to distribute movies -- one of my favorite topics. The authors' premise in this chapter is that the Internet is evolving into the seventh major studio. They write:

"...We have seen the gradual emergency, very loosely, of a seventh major studio-like power. It is neither owned by a single organisation or individual. It does not even have a manager. Rather it is a collection of tools, networks, information and communities which collectively could be said to be beginning to offer similar functions to a traditional vertically integrated studio. ...And of most interest to the independent producer, this 'studio' is neutral, largely meritocratic and completely global."

- This piece about Xbox users watching movies and TV shows on the system really annoyed me, because it contains not a single statistic about how many people have paid for TV shows or movies through Xbox...yet it's basically a wet kiss to Microsoft. If Xbox is doing so well, why not back it up with some data, guys?

- Robert Katz will be head of production at The Film Department, a new indie production company founded by Mark Gill and Neil Sacker.

Sunday/Monday links: Cellphone entertainment ... Blockbuster picks Blu-ray ... Digital cinema overseas

- Interesting piece in yesterday's New York Times about producing content for cell phones. Much of the focus is on ESPN's efforts.

Funny how everyone mentions the small screen as being the main limitation of working on a cell phone -- for me, it's the slow or stuttery frame rate.

- Blockbuster Video says it'll carry primarily Blu-ray high-def discs from here on out. From Forbes:

Since late 2006, the movie rental company has offered both formats at 250 stores across the country. Both formats were given equal billing, but Blockbuster soon realized that Blu-ray outsold its competitor by 70%.

Blockbuster will continue to rent the HD DVD titles it already offers and may expand its HD DVD inventory in the future but, for now, the company has placed all its chips on Blu-ray.

I still am not sure this is the HD DVD death knell everyone will assume it is. (I certainly can't remember the last time I was in a Blockbuster, and the one near my gym closed last year...)

- Variety has a report on the digital cinema roll-out in Europe.

- My Boston Globe column yesterday covered the use of artificial intelligence in videogames.

Variety's Home Entertainment Quarterly

Variety's quarterly report on home entertainment has a bunch of neat-o tech stories, including lots on Blu-ray versus HD DVD, a piece about VOD and digital downloads, and hacking copy protection.

I've got two pieces in the section: one is a look back at the ten years that the DVD format has been with us, headlined, 'How DVDs became a success,' and the other is a look at whether we could've avoided the Blu-ray/HD DVD stand-off.

My favorite quotes from that first piece are toward the end:

Many homevid vets don't believe that discs -- whether standard or high-definition -- will be replaced by digital delivery anytime soon.

"I'd be surprised if, four years from now, downloading of movies by consumers represents more than 7% of the total consumer spending on home entertainment," says Bo Andersen, president of the Entertainment Merchants Assn.

Lieberfarb agrees that discs won't be let go of easily: "There is a reluctance to experiment with transformative models, for fear that it'll cannibalize revenues in the short run."

Are we at the Blu-ray tipping point?

This piece from The Hollywood Reporter suggests that Blu-ray high-def discs are gaining momentum in the marketplace: in the first quarter, 70 percent of all high-def discs sold were Blu-ray. The data comes from the trade mag Home Media Retailer. From the piece:

Research...shows that eight of the 10 top-selling high-definition titles in the first quarter [of 2007] were on Blu-ray Disc. At the top of the list was "Casino Royale," which sold through to consumers an estimated 59,680 units in the period. The Blu-ray Disc edition of "Departed" finished second, while the HD DVD version of that Oscar-winning film placed third.

From January 1-March 31, consumers bought almost 1.2 million high-definition discs -- 832,530 Blu-ray units and 359,300 HD DVDs -- according to Home Media Magazine. In March, consumers bought 335,980 Blu-ray Discs and 119,570 HD DVDs.

Since the high-def format's inception -- HD DVD launched in April 2006, while Blu-ray got rolling two months later -- more than 2.14 million discs have been purchased by consumers: 1.2 million Blu-ray Discs and about 937,500 HD DVDs.

BusinessWeek on moguls going digital, and high-def discs

- In BusinessWeek, Ronald Grover looks at some of the new digital media ventures being launched by old-school media moguls, including Michael Eisner (Disney), Steven Bochco (LA Law and Hill Street Blues), and Herb Scannell (Nickelodeon).

- And Catherine Holahan suggests that price, not porn, may be the key to winning the high-def DVD battle.