Interview: Lionsgate's Jon Feltheimer

[Dave]

WS: Lionsgate has chosen the Blu-ray DVD format over HD-DVD. Why did you choose that, and are the two competing DVD formats going to hurt the DVD industry?

FELTHEIMER: We need to get resolution on this and, of course, you don’t want to make the consumer sit around and wait, not knowing which format is going to win. I have to be clear; we aren’t formally bound to Blu-ray. We do have the flexibility to go with whichever is the winning format, but we have chosen Blu-ray for a number of reasons, mostly technical. It has very robust copy protection, which is obviously very important for anti-piracy. It’s got great capacity—50 gigs—that is going to be very important not just for the additional features [that can be offered on a DVD] but for enhanced resolution as well. You’ve got seven studios supporting the format. We think that is important. There are lots of hardware manufacturers supporting it as well, and we felt in terms of high-def, this is really the technology of the future.

http://www.worldscreen.com/interview...heimer1006.htm