Format War Extended - Universal Announces 100 new Exclusives

[Chad Varnadore]

This announcement isn't at all surprising. It's virtually expected. But doesn't change anything for HD DVD. It just means that true movie fans may have to buy Universal's titles twice, if they really want them in high def asap. Now if Spielberg gave them the go ahead for JP or something, that would be surprising. I just hope that when they do announce for BD, they put more of an effort into it than they have for HD DVD. I think they're releasing combo discs more for authoring convenience of not having to port the extras to the HD DVD than because it's what consumers want. I know I love paying more for a flipper with assuredly DVD quality extras and no suprises, that in most cases the feature film, which is primarily what I want, has been confined to 15GB, lower than average VC1 bitrates, and 640kbps audio instead of their once norm of 1.5mbs. I think Universal's effort behind disc authoring is most telling in their use of the same generic menu on all their releases.