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Germany's Senator Entertainment follows Constantin, goes Blu-ray only
If you were wondering just how long you'd have to wait until the next domino fell, wonder no more. Germany's own Senator Home Entertainment is reportedly following in the footsteps of Constantin Film AG and will stop supporting HD DVD. Notably, any films that were already scheduled to arrive on HD DVD will supposedly still ship, but after March 1, 2008, the studio will be supporting Blu-ray exclusively. Another one bites the dust, we suppose.[Thanks, Khattab]
Germany's Constantin Film AG drops HD DVD, goes Blu-ray only
Since Warner announced it is ending support for HD DVD and going Blu-ray only, there has been endless rumor mongering over who would be next out the door. Surprisingly, none of those unnamed industry insiders named Constantin Film AG -- which calls itself Germany's leading independent film production and distribution company with 11 of the 25 most successful German theatrical films of the last ten years -- a company that has been releasing in both formats until now, but announced its movies will be released in Blu-ray only beginning March 1st. Citing Warner's shift and a desire to see the format war end, Constantin's Home Entertainment Director said it is "following the international trend." Obviously someone hasn't heard of International VMD Day. [Via heise online] [Warning: PDF read link]
Polymer Vision plans to commercialize foldable paper this year
If there's one thing the business-savvy CEOs of the world know, it's that you don't want your competition to get too far ahead of you, and just as Plastic Logic announced its plans to build the first electronic paper plant in Dresden, Germany, Polymer Vision is trying to make good on its nearly two-year old promise. During 2005's IFA expo, Philip assured us all that we'd be blown away by the firm's rollable, bendable displays in a mere two years, and now that 24 months have nearly elapsed, a company spinoff is looking to make it happen. According to a German report, Polymer Vision is still on track for "commercializing the foldable PV-QML5 display" that we've all grown quite fond of. Planning to use the technology in e-books and electronic map guides, the initial 4.8-inch display will tout a 320 x 200 resolution, 10:1 contrast ratio, support for four gray tones, and be only 100 micrometers thick. Sadly, no hard dates were passed down as to when we could expect the first production batch to head out to consumers, but now that there's some serious competition brewing just a few miles down the road, we'd bet a good bit of effort goes into making that 2007 date a reality.[Via I4U]
AACS still not finished: is this intentional?
That's the word according to German mag heise; apparently disagreement from within the Blu-ray Disc Association over how AACS and BD work together means no high definition DVD formats yet. Beyond just noting the delay, they also dropped a few dimes on what we can expect from managed copy: the content holder gets to decide how many copies can be made and any device they are copied to requires an Internet connection for verification. Microsoft's COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocol) makes sure you're actually watching a movie and not dumping the video to a file, after which that HDCP-compliant videocard that doesn't exist yet finally lets you play HD-quality content on your monitor.I really have to wonder, is the BDA that far apart on the DRM issue, or is there any possibility that this is intentional to delay the launch of HD-DVD, which was supposed to debut last year but can't until AACS is finished. Being the first mover was part of HD-DVD's advantage in the face of Blu-ray's greater storage capacity but that continues to shrink and may even be nonexistent by the time they launch. I'll tell you what though Toshiba, how about we just forget the whole AACS, DRM thing? We won't tell if you won't.
