Following Universal Music's announcement
the film studio Lions Gate has also announced that it will release titles in the Blu-ray Disc (BD) format. The major studios committed to the BD format are therefore now Sony Pictures (including MGM), Disney, Fox and Lions Gate while the studios supporting HD DVD are Warner, Universal Pictures and Paramount . DreamWorks is left as the only major studio still undecided.
Lions Gate president Steve Beeks said the company was swayed in favor of Blu-ray by new disclosures on manufacturing costs. He also lauded the Blu-ray group's decision to adopt renewable copyright protections.
"The timing was right," Beeks said Tuesday. "We have been very adamant about sitting on the fence for a long period of time. But it was a conscious decision on our part, because we felt the best thing for us to do was to wait until there was enough information in the marketplace."
In the last two weeks, disc replication companies have shown the studio that manufacturing costs on Blu-ray would drop in the next three to five years to within the range of what the studio currently pays to make standard DVDs, he said. |
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Source: variety.com
