What does Universal gain by staying HD-DVD only?

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by bruceames

I think the market is a little small right now for Universal to worry too much about lost BD sales and they can just make it up later anyway: the sales will be waiting for them.

This is just speculation but maybe it's partly because Universal wants to ensure HD DVD survives in order to create a replication choice in a universal player world. It may be advantageous to have that choice in order to optimize cost and space concerns. What about all the existing DVD lines?

You won't get a "universal player world" until late 2008 or maybe even mid 2009 -- if HD DVD can survive that long. I have yet to see a single statistic that even implies the LG players are flying off the shelves. Thus no one is going to build anything that competes directly with it and get at best half of what LG is getting now.

What does Universal get by being HD DVD only?

They get a HUGE amount of support from Microsoft. I'm not saying that Microsoft is actually paying Universal to stay HD DVD. I've heard many rumors to that effect, but I've seen absolutely no evidence to support it -- and it's not Microsoft's style.

However, Microsoft is minimizing their license fees and is providing unprecented support (people, equipment, etc.) in helping them implement iHD (I know they now call it HDi because they don't want people to think Apple invented it) and VC-1. This is helping Universal keep the cost of authoring HD DVD way below the cost of any Blu-ray studio.