as reported by Bruce Apar > dvdj@dvdj.info

If this isn’t the best attended Consumer Electronics Show ever, I’ll be a unified high-def format’s uncle. In 33 years, I’ve never seen the press room so mobbed, and it’s been expanded from previous years. But no operable wi-fi signal. At a consumer electronics convention. Go figure. Or just go hard wire.

For Bill Gateskeeper’s keynote speech last night (01.04.06), I was among the standing room only crowd of more than 500 … in the “overflow” room. We watched a big-screen satellite uplink selling us a Bill of goods.

And he had plenty of them too. By my notepad, 16 pages’ worth. This edition of the “Mr. Bill” show ran more than 90 minutes, but for the sake of filing this first blog “Live from CES” for DVDA.ORG ASAP, I’ll just focus for now on high-def digital disc.

For those keeping score (this means you, Da Godfather Lou Skriba!), after Day 0 of The Show, January 4, I’d call i HD DVD 2, Blu-Ray coming to bat tonight with its press reception. 

During Bill’s Variety Hour and a Half, Microsoft announced that an outboard HD DVD player for Xbox 360 will be available by the end of 2006. Thus, as one of my journalist/analyst colleagues pointed out, unlike PlayStation 3, the added cost of a high-def drive will not be passed along to buyers of Xbox 360 as it will to PS3 customers. It’s an opt-in high-def feature.

Another point: market data people will know that everyone who chooses to buy an Xbox 360 HD DVD module will also buy HD DVD software, while there is no such direct attach rate of BD software that can be extrapolated from sales of PS3. Sony no doubt will count every PS3 sold as a Blu-ray player, but how many of those players will merit an asterisk, akin to a ballplayer on the DL (Disabled List).

So score one point for HD DVD on the back of Microsoft answering the PS3 BD Trojan Horse strategy with its own, arguably smarter, strategy for X360 hosting an HD DVD extended footprint.

HD DVD FOR $500 END OF MARCH 

The second point for HD DVD was won by Toshiba’s announcing a $500 entry-level player due March, along with an $800 step-up model. Both can be ordered as of yesterday morning at Amazon.com/hddvd, for delivery in March.

But that’s not all. At the HD DVD Promotion Group  press conference, beautifully rendered, clips were played of Mission: Impossible 3, Poseidon, Harry Potter, Bourne Supremacy and other movies. Afterwards, the mistress of ceremonies, Nancy O’Dell of Entertainment Tonight, opened the player, took out the disc that was the source signal for the presentation and announced, “This is an HD DVD production player using a a disc that is not a prototype, but came right off the assembly line.”

In addition to Amazon, Best Buy, Crutchfield, Sears and Tweeter were identified as HD DVD’s lead retailers for the March launch, both for storefront and online sales.

In all, 50 titles are promised from the combined studios by the end of May and 200 by end of year. Paramount presumably will be able to add at a later date HD DVD titles from its recent acquisition of DreamWorks, which would include the likes of Gladiator and Shrek.

 So, what’s the big deal about a player announcement, you ask, and how does that add up to scoring a point in the format war? In this case, it’s more like a tennis point, where HD DVD served and aced its BD opponent, which couldn’t return serve.

BD FOR $1800 IN MAY

Pioneer, whose apparent market approach is to combine an entry-level player and reference model all-in-one, announced a single BD player at the decidedly snob-market price of $1800, more than twice the price of Toshiba’s high-end HD DVD model. It is due on the market in May, several weeks after the first HD DVD player is on store shelves and in some home theaters.

 Pioneer prior to the show had announced its PC-based Blu-ray Disc/DVD writer, Model BDR-101A, a $995 unit that records up to 25GBytes on a single layer at 2X (DVD-R/+R is 8X and DVD-RW/+RW is 4X). It is due “first quarter” of this year and is aimed squarely at professional content developers. The BDR-101A includes data recording application for transferring digital files to BD discs.

 Pioneer Electronics senior VP Andy Parsons said the BD player’s stiff price is based on the “early adopter” market the company anticipates will kick-start Blu-ray sales. But that type of logic might qualify as regression analysis: not offering a more affordable price point than $1800 is not so much responding to an early adopter market as it is creating an early adopter walled garden where the barrier to entry is over the heads of 95% of consumers.

 I’ll be catching up with the redoubtable Mr. Parsons, hopefully, at tonight’s Blu-ray reception to grill him further on this curious way of launching Blu-ray.

'HD DVD IS NOW PLAYING'

Some especially hard-nosed scorekeepers might take a half-point away from HD DVD for the malfunctioning player that reared its ugly head during a demo of interactive features by Microsoft senior program manager Kevin Collins, who travels the globe as a very personable and knowledgeable HD DVD demonstrator.

[It needs to be stated here, in the interest of full disclosure, that Kevin recently was a great help in my researching an HD DVD technical white paper for DVD Forum -- for which I received compensation, but have no vested interest in promoting the format vis-à-vis BD.]

Being the pro he is, Kevin recovered from the momentary mishap without missing a beat to continue his illustration of how HD DVD interactivity is a quantum leap from the DVD extras to we’ve  become accustomed.

 A director’s commentary is accompanied by a pop-up image of the filmmaker, who literally is turned into a “talking head” superimposed over the movie as it is playing, resulting in what Microsoft calls picture-in-picture commentary. A bio of an actor also pops up against a translucent background to intrude minimally on the viewing experience and without having to stop the movie, click to main menu and select a bonus feature before reversing the sequence to resume the movie. When subtitles are enabled for the hard of hearing, not only is the dialogue visible at screen bottom but is accompanied by the face of the actor speaking, especially helpful in scenes where dialogue is heard without the actor in the shot.

 This programming language, developed by Microsoft and Disney and called iHD, is much more dynamic, seamless, and user-friendly than the first generation of DVD extras.

 Throwing down the gauntlet to the other Blues Brother in its sibling rivalry, Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Digital Media Network Company for Toshiba, and chairman of HD DVD Promotion Group, proudly told the audience, “HD DVD is now playing.”

I GOT ME A TWIN FORMAT HD DVD

Putting an even finer point on the momentum it has valid reason right now to claim, studio backers of HD DVD are said to have been Number 1 at the box office for 24 of the past 35 years, to have produced half of all 22,000 Hollywood films ever made, to have 52 titles in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Films of All Time, and to have six of the top 10 selling DVDs of 2005. In other words, in so many words, “BD’s studio support is no more impressive or carries more market weight than ours.”  BD studios include Disney, Fox, Sony Pictures AND Warner, which had previously announced it will offer titles in both formats.

 Oh, and did I mention that HD DVD Promotion Group gave all the press attending its demo reception a production HD DVD Hybrid Disc that I’m playing right now in my Sony VAIO laptop. The first layer is encoded in SD and second layer in HD DVD.

There are six generic video clips of nature scenes to showcase HD content. I’m headed to the show floor even as I type to test that layer at one of the HD DVD exhibits. Wish me luck. I’ll report on the results in one of the subsequent blogs.