Star Wars: HD format war may result in a skip to download?

[dialog_gvf]

The Digital Bits

While we're talking Fox, you may recall how we mentioned a few days ago that Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum told audiences at the Star Wars Celebration convention in Europe recently that the Star Wars films wouldn't be released in high-definition until one format emerged a winner. Industry sources have informed us that McCallum also added that if the high-def format war isn't resolved soon, the company might skip high-def disc altogether and release the films in HD via download only. Yikes!

I highly doubt this myself. But, it's a disturbing thing to be said.

Gary

[WickyWoo]

Lucas is a screamer for quality, it's simply not going to happen.

I think it's more of a threat than anything else to try to move things along.

[mshulman]

I think anything that is available as a download will also be available on some sort of media. I'd rather rent (via netflix) or buy a title. I don't want to pay $5 just to wait to download it and then only be able to watch it once or as many times as possible in a limited time window.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

The Digital Bits

I highly doubt this myself. But, it's a disturbing thing to be said.

Gary

Their comments are absurd and somewhat ironic.

The irony being: If they want something done they can do it themselves.

If they want the format war over with, everyone knows all they have to do is throw ANY kind of Star Wars movie out on BD, through Fox this Christmas, and it's over.

[mike79]

i really don't see this happening. And where would they have it, on Xbox 360 only. Isn't that the only place you can download HD movies. That makes no sense. Why would they do that. That is even dumber that releasing on blu-ray only. Which they should. Why would they want to release Star wars on anything else.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by mshulman

I think anything that is available as a download will also be available on some sort of media. I'd rather rent (via netflix) or buy a title. I don't want to pay $5 just to wait to download it and then only be able to watch it once or as many times as possible in a limited time window.

Agreed; it's nice to know that we see eye to eye on *some* things! :-)

[blackpixels]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Lucas is a screamer for quality, it's simply not going to happen.

I think it's more of a threat than anything else to try to move things along.

Yes, but more so a glutten for cash...look how long he held out for DVD...he just might do something retarded like this just stir things up, but if he would just decide to be exclusive to the blu-ray format HE could be then be the deciding factor...

[Ender]

Originally Posted by JTK

The irony being: If they want something done they can do it themselves.

At least Spielberg seems to have figured that out, maybe he'll be the one to convince Lucas.

[BStecke]

Well, good for us, they ARE spending a lot of time together on Indy 4!

[Blu-dock Saint]

Originally Posted by BStecke

Well, good for us, they ARE spending a lot of time together on Indy 4!

I hope its the excellent surprise that die hard 4 was, instead of falling short....one name that I dont want to be ruined in films is indiana jones.

[baccusboy]

What?? Lucas miss an opportunity to put his product out on yet another format, and make more money off of three re-releases of minor edits on the same thing? Never gonna happen.

Lucas is as money-grubbing as they come. He lost me when he cut the original scene in the creature cantina to make Han Solo look less bad.

[resmonkey]

Download? Ahahahaha...

[WickyWoo]

There's no convincing Lucas that needs to be done

Simply critical mass of owners to make it worth his while

[darinp2]

I think somebody should tell Rick McCallum that if they would release these 6 films in not too long on Blu-ray it might be the end of the format war anyway. They could even release them totally barebones so that they could double dip later and it still might be enough to bring about one winner. I realize that they probably won't do it, but just thinking that things along the lines of, "If there isn't a winner we will ..." is a little interesting when they could likely decide that there will be a winner just by their actions.

--Darin

[efralope]

I don't see why anyone would be surprised by this.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/articl...173216,00.html

from a Time magazine interview over a year ago:

R.C. What's the next big thing in home gizmos?

G.L. The things they're going to be selling are larger servers, storage units. That will be the next big thing you buy to put in your house. Now, with TiVo, it goes into a mysterious server somewhere. But this is actually going to be in your house, your server, and anything you want to download and store there, like a safe, is just going to be stored there. It's just going to be huge. It's not going to be like what they have now.

R.C. And a movie downloaded from such a storage unit has the same quality as a DVD?

G.L. It's actually better. That's where Hi-Def is going to run into problems, Because you can download it off your hi-def internet line and you don't have to worry about Blue Ray or all this competition that they're going to be fighting over for the next few years. You can just do it. And play it.

It seems like even before the launch of the formats, Lucas foresaw this stalled battle taking place for a few years, and is thinking several years down the road.

[zombieking]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

The Digital Bits



I highly doubt this myself. But, it's a disturbing thing to be said.

Gary

That just won't ride for a lot of movie collectors. Like myself, I'd prefer to have the movie in my hand, and shelf it when I'm done watching.

[DrinkMore]

Riiight. SHENANIGANS!

Star Wars on DOWNLOAD of all the movies in the world - STAR WARS? Available to all the warez0rs out there, bit torrent, p2p - lol.

I don't think so. Will never happen. Let along who the hell wants to download 25gig+ minimum?

NOT I!

[WickyWoo]

They keep failing to take into account that we don't have the infrastructure to support that kind of bandwidth.

It ain't happening for at least a decade, and for it to become ubiquitous, 20 years. Even then physical media isn't going anywhere. VOD/Downloads will kill rental dead, never sales

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by efralope

It seems like even before the launch of the formats, Lucas foresaw this stalled battle taking place for a few years, and is thinking several years down the road.

Yep. And many of us has said that if the format war doesn't end soon it opens the crack for something else. But something actually has to exploit it.

So far equipment for showing it, and storing it, and sufficient broadband (without concept destroying caps) doesn't exist to support downloads for the mainstream market. While Blu-ray does exist.

I think perhaps ignorance is driving the statements at this point. And once Fox sits down with George and talks to him about BD he may come around. Maybe the Scott bros can be sent in as emissaries on our behalf?

It is said Fox asked GL to allow Star Wars to be released on DTheater, but was turned down. That shows at least Fox is always thinking about pushing Star Wars onto new dips that WOULD sell.

[blublublu]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

They keep failing to take into account that we don't have the infrastructure to support that kind of bandwidth.

It ain't happening for at least a decade, and for it to become ubiquitous, 20 years. Even then physical media isn't going anywhere. VOD/Downloads will kill rental dead, never sales

Hmmm. 20 Years from now, I can't really see we'll still be interested in physical media. However, I'm mainly a renter and not a purchaser, and with few exceptions can't see the economics in buying a disc. Downloading/VOD is going to be much more economical than moving plastic around (gosh, think about the inefficiencies of the whole Netflix concept)

Aside: don't think that Microsoft is going to be king here. The Cable, Sat, and Telco folks are not going to sit idly by and let MS skim away revenue by riding on their pipes.