Warner: No Payoff for Move to Blu-ray

[jed]

Warner Home Entertainment President Kevin Tsujihara says the studio took no pay-offs to exclusively back Blu-ray.

In a post-announcement conference call, Tsujihara flatly denied rumors that studio had accepted anywhere from 250M to $500M in exchange for dropping its HD DVD format support.

According to the exec, Warner's sole motivation in dropping its HD DVD format support was to ensure growth of the "category" and the long-term health of the industry.

Full story:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1327

[blauter78]

Highly Doubtful....

[Blu-News.com]

LOL, Paramount story all over again. It's going to be a long day..

[jadedeath]

Translation:

Warner accepted $500,000,001 to back Blu-Ray.

Not that it matters, HD-DVD is as close to being doomed as they ever have been... all they need is a slight push and they're over the edge.

Logan

[MasterBlaster]

Hahaha...bullshit! They lied for months about their position of neutrality, now I'm going to believe this? Don't think so.

I don't care if there was a payoff, I expect it. It's completely fair. I just want them to admit it so we can move on.

[chipvideo]

If thats the case then they can jump back to hd dvd at any time.

[Rayzor77]

The red boys need to stop the bickering....especially since Toshiba already bribed Paramount, and was trying to bribe WB as well. I guess what goes around, comes around.

[Blu-News.com]

LMAO totally agree Jadedeath. Payoff or not it doesn't matter, they chose Blu, and they will stay Blu. No reason to waste time fighting if they got paid or not.

[MrE]

either way it was the right decision

[Kotatsu Neko]

I don't believe that for a second, not that it matters, the decision has been made and the war is over.

[Pilam69]

It's a bargain at twice the price to have this format feud over.

[Supernatural]

According to the owner of Home Theater Forum who appears to have been an insider on this deal, WB was given $620 million (not sure if it's in cash or incentives or both) to go exclusive.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...ml#post3297594

[Balian]

I am a big Blu-ray supporter as any around here and even I have a hard time believing this. If this the case, then Warner is the most ethically run company ever in the history of mankind.

This is just to cover their behinds legally.

[BigKurz]

LOL. Not one bit of news can enter this forum without it being given a red-spin.

Especially given that Paramount DID take a payoff to go hd-dvd, why would he not just admit to it if there were one?

Is that just too painful for some of you hd-dvd'ers to admit? That not only did they go blu, but did so because it was truly the better and more-demanded product. Not that I would expect people on an anonymous message board to so easily admit defeat, but i'll take solace in knowing that soon enough you'll be at BB with a BD player in your hands.

[wentwj]

Again, I suspect it's probably tricky wording. They probably didn't get cash money, but probably get obscenely reduced pressing rates and probably some advertisement.

I doubt the BDA just wrote them a check, so it probably wasn't a technical "pay-off" but I'm sure they got "incentives"

At least the red fanboys can be happy the war is over, or at this point the end of it is no more than a formality.