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Toshiba's HD-E1 HD DVD player launches in Europe
HD DVD has finally touched down in Europe with the release of Toshiba's HD-E1 HD DVD player. For all intents and purposes identical to the second generation HD-A2 recently released in the U.S. it carries an MSRP of £450 and of course shares the HDMI 1.2 connector, slim design, 1080i output and lack of analog 5.1 outputs from its American cousin. The official Toshiba site mentions that at launch, the player will not be compatible with 25fps or 50hz encoded HD DVD titles, but will later after a firmware update, but its not clear if any such discs are available yet. A quick look at Amazon shows titles like V for Vendetta and Superman Returns ready to ship. Europe may have had to wait quite a while for HD DVD to hit but all in all are starting off with a much more refined product and pool of available titles to choose from. The high end HDMI 1.3-equipped 1080p-capable HD-XE1 is still set to ship in January, but we're really waiting to see what happens when Blu-ray movie exclusives in the U.S. become available on HD DVD in Europe via Studio Canal.[Via HDTV UK]
StudioCanal HD DVD releases encoded at 1080p 24p = easy imports of Blu-ray exclusives?
StudioCanal, not well known in the US but one of the largest distributors of movies in the world will be releasing films on HD DVD, and now we have confirmation from Microsoft's Amir M. that they will be encoded in VC-1 at 24p, theoretically removing any possible barrier for their being played on US HD DVD players. The main benefit of this of course being that StudioCanal holds the European release rights to many movies currently limited to Blu-ray only distributors like Fox here in the U.S. Unless region coding is adopted by HD DVD, it could be very simple for aficionados to obtain copies of their favorite movies simply by importing them, and perhaps put additional pressure on distributors here to go multiformat to avoid losing sales to importers.We are not aware of any plans yet announced by StudioCanal to release movies on Blu-ray, and with their Vivendi Universal connection plus Blu-ray region coding that may not give US buyers access to Universal content anyway. Of course we have to wait until the titles are actually released and whether or not region coding for HD DVD is finalized, but this could provide a big boost to HD DVD supporters who don't want to be locked out of some of their favorite movies.[Thanks for the tip Glenn!]
HD-DVD gets exclusive support from The Weinstein Company
Former Miramax heads Harvey and Bob Weinstein have decided to join Universal in exclusively supporting Toshiba's HD-DVD format. Our friend Warren Lieberfarb (he of the "Sony is using tactics from the Art of War" statement) is a consultant to their distribution company, Genius, so this is not entirely surprising. No word on what titles to expect or exactly when, but apparently they will probably release in summer rather than spring with the launch of the first HD-DVD players. Also, Studio Canal has pledged to release 30 titles in europe, while Toshiba is expecting more than 200 HD-DVD discs available before the 2006 holiday season. Will that be enough to stave off the Blu-ray/PS3 behemoth bearing down on them?The Passion of the Clerks, Sin City 2, Scary Movie 4, Michael Moore's "Sicko", all on HD-DVD only apparently.
