Slideshow of the HD DVD Promotion Group's Press Conference.

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http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/16862.html

At the Consumer Electronics Show CES in Las Vegas, the HD DVD Promotion Group made a bevy of announcements at their press conference Sunday night.

The conference began with a short man-on-the-street video poking fun (mostly) at the competition, complete with this classic response when a person was asked if they knew what Blu-ray was:

"Is that a porn star?"

While CES might be taking place in Vegas, the rest of the video was tamer, and ended with A/V guru Joe Kane touting the capabilities of HD DVD.

The big news coming out of the conference included the announcement of new community features for HD DVD users, new members of the HD DVD camp and new content for 2007.

Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment and chairman of the HD DVD Promotion Group, announced that more than 300 new HD DVD titles will be released by studios in 2007, including the Matrix trilogy, Blade Runner and the original Star Trek series digital re-mastered.

Kornblau also discussed why the camp thinks it is important that many HD DVD titles come as combo discs with standard DVD. "We see combo discs as a way to transition from DVD to HD DVD," he said.

One of the points hammered home at the conference was the importance of a standards in all HD DVD products, which is allowing the debut of community features, including downloading trailers, movie show times, and a new feature that allows users to share custom movie clips.

Kevin Collins of the HD DVD Promotion Group demoed the sharing feature, which lets users send defined clips from movies over the Internet to their friends (assuming they also have the title on disc). Users can start and stop custom movie clips with one-button begin and end functionality and the player will store the clip in the unit's memory and upload it over the network to send to a friend.

HD DVD users can access the content through the "Download Center," thanks to the "guaranteed features of every player," says Collins.

Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company, spoke about the HD DVD Global "Eco-System," announcing sales targets of a minimum of 1.8 million units by the fourth quarter of 2007. The group's 2007 sales forecast for North America is over $600 million.

"If our resolution of 2006 was to bring HD DVD to the early adopter, our resolution for 2007 is to bring it to the early majority," Fujii said.

Fujii announced that the technical feasibility for a 51 GB, triple-layer HD DVD disc has been confirmed, with the standardization expected by the end of the year. Currently HD DVD discs are 15 GB per layer, but the capacity is currently being expanded to 17 GB. Single-layer Blu-ray discs are 25 GB, with dual-layers clocking in at 50 GB.

Amir Majidimehr, corporate VP of Microsoft's Consumer Media Technology Group, announced the newest manufacturers of HD DVD products, including ED Digital, LiteOn, Meridian and Onkyo.

Majidimehr touted the response to HD DVD, and said that by setting expectations low at last year's CES, they were able to over deliver on their promises.

The event was MC'ed by Access Hollywood's Billy Bush.