This week Amazon Unbox is offering up 300, Hot Fuzz, Zodiac, Breach, Ghost Rider, and Music and Lyrics as their $.99 rental offerings.

I saw 300 in theaters and it is a great movie, definitely worth $.99, as is Hot Fuzz, which was hilarious. (From the makers of Shaun of the Dead - if you enjoyed that, you’ll likely enjoy this too.) Ghost Rider is a fun, cheesy movie - if you like that kind of thing (I do). Not a big risk for $.99. Breach I rented a few weeks ago when it was a $.99 offering, not bad for under a buck. The others, no idea.

And a final reminder, really this time, that the $15 credit offering by TiVo and Amazon when they launched Unbox on TiVo expires today! It is good through August 31st, 2007 - not sure in which timezone, so don’t delay. If you have any of your credit left, rent or buy something *now*, or kiss it goodbye. Remember, you have 30 days to watch a rental once you order it, and purchases last indefinitely. So you can plan ahead.

Home Media Magazine is reporting on high-def sales. For the week ending 8/26, BD had 68% of sales, 67% year to date, and 61% since inception. They also talk about the Venturer SHD7000 HD DVD player and give the $199 price point. There is also an article on a survey conducted by Warner, which shows that both formats have work to do. It showed 48% of respondents were indifferent to buying either Blu-ray or HD DVD. 31% citing price as a barrier, and 21% citing the format war. Among consumers with an HDTV, 58% said they don’t need and HD player, with 46% saying prices were too high and 23% saying they didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision. 27% said they were willing to wait out the format war for a winner before buying. Both sides need to educate consumers on the benefits of HD - but the format war isn’t helping at all.

For sales for the week ending 8/26, Blu-ray had 8 of the top 10 positions, with HD DVD the other 2 - and 1st place was 300 on BD, while 2nd was the HD DVD version. For aggregate high-def sales, 5 of the 10 are Blu-ray only, while the other 5 are available on both Blu-ray and HD DVD. There is also a high-def supplement with a number of articles on HD DVD and Blu-ray. Year-to-date through August 5th, out of the Top 20 high-def best sellers, BD has 16, while HD DVD has 4. And three of those are on the list under both formats (300 - BD #1, HD DVD #4, Planet Earth: Complete - BD #10, HD DVD #6, The Departed - BD #3, HD DVD #11). The 4th HD DVD title is Batman Begins (#14) , which is one of Warner’s titles not yet on BD. 300 sold 134,200 BD and 70,200 HD DVD - still roughly 2:1 BD. The Departed sold 73,300 BD and 43,000 HD DVD - not quite 2:1. And Planet Earth sold 52,900 HD DVD and 44,700 BD - pretty close.

On the aggregate Top 20 YTD eleven titles are BD only (numbers 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, and 20) eight are dual-format (numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 14, 16, and 17), and only one is HD DVD only - Batman Begins (#13). Interesting only, on all of the top sellers lists, Universal failed to place at all. On the week ended 8/26, Paramount only placed due the Blu-ray releases of Shooter and Disturbia. On the YTD, Paramount failed to place at all on the individual list, and only placed on the aggregate list (at #17) with their dual-format Babel. It is pretty clear than BD sales have been stronger, dominating the top sellers lists, and neither Universal nor Paramount have really been major players to date. Even on the HD DVD Top 20 list Universal held six spots (6, 8, 12, 15, 16, and 18) and Paramount only two (14 & 20). Warner dominated the list with 11 slots - all the rest except #2, which went to BBC Video for Planet Earth! The real winner has been Warner, with 11 of the Top 20 HD DVD and 4 of the Top 20 BD released - including #1 and #3 on both lists - 300 and The Departed in both cases.

It is kind of freaky seeing the extensive coverage of holiday movies, since it is August - but it makes sense, this is aimed at industry and they have to start months in advance with orders, etc.

OK, moving on. Yesterday I mentioned that Acer had joined the BDA. Well, it looks like they’ve backed that up with the launch of a media center PC that incorporates Blu-ray. The Aspire iDea 520 is designed to fit into your entertainment center, with a layout more like an A/V component than a traditional PC. According to The Register:

At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin today, Acer announced the Aspire iDea 520, a media centre system with a slot-load Blu-ray Disc drive. The machine is based on a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 and packs in 2GB of DDR 2 memory, a 500GB hard drive, an AMD ATI ‘M76M’ graphics chip with 512MB of video memory, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, and a digital/analogue TV tuner.

The iDea 520 is due to go on sale in Europe in October for €1999.

And speaking of IFA, Gizmodo was at the HD DVD press conference today. They really make it sound weak. No real new news, and no real rebuttals of the BDA’s claims at their press conference yesterday. They again trotted out the completely bogus ’stats’ of “For every 2 ps3’s, one movie is sold. While 4 movies are bought for every [HD DVD] player” which is really dishonest. Yes, I’m sure it is factually correct. But you can’t count every PS3 as a BD player since not everyone who buys one will ever use it to watch movies, conversely you can’t not count it at all. It is simply an unknown since no one, except maybe Sony, has any idea what the split is. The HD DVD camp likes to include the PS3’s numbers when it makes HD DVD look good - as here with attach rates (how many movies sold per player), but they’ll exclude the PS3 when that makes them look good (total players sold). Such as when they said, in the same press conference “The hi def format is about stand alone consoles, not game machines.” It is bogus either way. (And yes, it is also bogus when the Blu-ray camp plays similar games.) Their big claim? That they have 70% of the European IT market. Not sure if that’s 70% of PCs sold with a high-def drive, or 70% of models with a high-def drive, or what. But either way, if that’s the best claim they can make - weak.

While I’m on HD DVD, EngadgetHD noticed a new HD DVD promotional site from Universal. It looks like they found it before it is fully baked - it hasn’t officially launched yet and a number of sections of the site don’t work yet. It also has auto-playing video with sound - lame. Something to keep an eye on for when they finish the site and launch it.

HD DVD isn’t the only format getting a black eye though, the BD camp gets one for Disney’s terrible framing on the Blu-ray Pirates of the Caribbean. See the link for screen-captures from the DVD and BD releases, showing the difference in how some scenes were framed in the transfer from film. The BD release cuts off more of the top of the frame, removing heads and the like in some scenes, while showing more of the bottom of the scene - which is generally not as meaningful. Nothing to do with the format itself, but it would be nice if Disney fixed that.

And, lastly, despite all the talk about BD and HD DVD - DVD isn’t dead yet. The Gadgetress is reporting on a new release from JVC - 8.5GB dual-layer DVD-RW discs. This bumps -RW to the capacity previously limited to DVD-ROM and DVD-R discs. The discs require burners that are compatible with the “DVD-RW for DL” specification, and support 2x writing on drives supporting Ver. 2.0 of the spec. The discs also have a hard coat which makes them 150 times more resistant to scratching than a standard DVD. JVC also issued a press release.

I’ll get the HD DVD tidbit out of the way first. Yesterday I posted about the new ‘low-cost’ HD DVD player coming from Venturer, the SHD7000. At the time the price was unknown, but Video Business is reporting that the price will be $199. So - not a big deal. I fully expect the Toshiba HD-A3 to be $199.99 when it launches, and be a better player. There is a hidden bit of news here though - Venturer just OEMs from a Chinese manufacturer. So the real news is that there is an OEM out there making a cheap player that 2nd and 3rd tier brands can slap their name on.

And in other news, the IFA Consumer Electronics Tradeshow, the largest consumer electronics tradeshow in the world (yes, bigger than CES - the largest show in the US), kicks off August 31st - Friday - and runs through September 5th. And news is already starting to pile up with pre-show announcements. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) will be a major force at IFA. Expect a lot of announcements - on top of those below. CDRinfo.com has an article on the BDA at the show.

PC maker Acer has joined the BDA. That means Acer will now have a hand in shaping the BD specs. And they plan to add BD players and burners to their desktop and laptop PCs. Of course, Acer has also just acquired Gateway as well.

The China Hualu Group Co. has also joined the BDA. They’re a Chinese manufacturer of DVD players and recorders, so this likely signals an intent to product BD players, and perhaps recorders. They have a booth at the show, so there may be more news forthcoming as to their plans.

Studio Canal, which had formerly released only HD DVD, has jumped up on the fence with the announcement of their first Blu-ray release a three film box-set of “Les Bronzes”.

Singulus Technologies, a Blu-ray production equipment vendor, has announced two new orders for BD production lines - one for Asia and one for Europe. The lines will initially be for BD25, but can easily be upgraded to BD50.

BenQ has announced a $199 BD-ROM PC drive, the BR1000. This is strictly a reader, it doesn’t write any optical media. They’ve also announced the $599 BR1001 which will burn CD, DVD, and BD media. Both will be available in September.

And there have been a number of player announcements.

Sony announced the BDP-S500, which seems to be a higher-end version of the BDP-S300. It has support for 1080p24/60, 7.1 audio output, and it can internally decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, as well as passing both as a bitstream to a compatible receiver over HDMI 1.3. As part of the announcement Sony said that a copy of the Spider-man Trilogy (on Blu-ray, of course) would be bundled with the BDP-S300 and BDP-S500. But it isn’t clear yet if that is just for Europe or if the US is included as well.

Samsung has provided more details on their BD-P1400 and BD-P2400 BD players, as well as their dual-format BD-UP5000. The BD-P1400 supports 1080p24/60, 5.1 audio output, and supports Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD. It has HDMI 1.3 as well as an Ethernet port, and it will be available in September. The BD-P2400 adds 7.1 audio output and an HQV processor to those specs, and will be out in October. The BD-UP5000 is basically identical to the BD-P2400, with the addition of HD DVD support, and it will also be available in October.

Philips announced the BDP-7100. It has support for 1080p24/60, and has Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD internal decoding. It will be available soon across Europe.

Sharp has announced another Blu-ray player, the Sharp Aquos BD-HP205. Full specs should be announced during the show, and Sharp has stated that they would one day be the largest manufacturer of Blu-ray players. Bold words, I hope they back that up with products - they’ve announced BD players in the past only to cancel them.

Loewe announced a very slick looking player, the Blutech Vision. It is only 6cm tall, and it has support for 1080p24, and decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

And last, but not least, Daewoo has jumped into Blu-ray - impressively. They’ve unveiled a player which leapfrogs over the Blu-ray Profile 1.1 right to Profile 2.0 - aka BD Live. It has a blue mirrored front panel which looks pretty good, and it will reportedly play all recordable/rewritable BD, DVD, and CD formats and also supports DivX, as well as upscaling DVDs and JPEG images. And it has a USB port on the front for playing downloaded video and viewing photos. It sounds like quite a nice player - and it is rumored to not be that expensive, but we’ll see.

Items picked up from Blu-ray.com: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.

If you read that subject and mentally completed it with “…so are the Days of our Lives”, then you may be interested in this news.

E. Stephen Mack, Director of TiVoCast Operations, just announced that TiVo has added yet another TiVoCast channel: Days of our Lives. Every Wednesday you will get exclusive behind-the-scenes material from the long-running (since 1965) NBC soap opera.

Subscribe on your TiVo under TiVo Central -> Find Programs -> Download TV & Movies or sign up via the TiVoCast website.

(Not my cup of tea - call me when they add on-demand content from The Anime Network. )

Capable Networks, which already runs sites such as DVRplayground.com and SlingCommunity.com, has acquired the leading TiVo user community online, TiVoCommunity.com. Wow, I didn’t see that coming.

My immediate reaction was “Oh no - are they going to migrate TC to their in-house platform?” Frankly, I find the platform they developed in-house, and use on sites like SlingCommunity and DVRplayground, to be vastly inferior to the vBulletin boards used on TiVoCommunity. And that’s saying a bit, since I have issues with vB too. But I find some re-assurance in their press release: “Capable Networks plans to maintain the current, successful format of TiVoCommunity, even while planning a few specific improvements to the website.” So hopefully they won’t be making any drastic changes.

Thanks to Dave Zatz for the tip via email - and here’s the press release.

Sony put out a press release to tout their BD sales across Europe, and to promote some of their upcoming BD releases such as Spider-man 3 and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind - the first high-def release of his films. (I’m looking forward to that myself - that and Blade Runner are two big BD releases for me this fall.) Standard PR material, which I’ll include below, but a key bit is:

Since the European launch of the PS3 in March, weekly sales of Blu-ray Disc(TM) titles have averaged between two- and five-times the amount of HD DVD sales week over week.**

Blu-ray(TM) High-Def software now accounts for 69% of the total high-definition market in Europe, with SPHE titles making up more than 47% of the total European Blu-ray market. SPHE also holds the #1 best selling high-definition title in Europe — Casino Royale.

Simon McDowell, Senior Vice President, Europe, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment added: “With the breadth of titles already available on Blu-ray, the format is out-selling HD-DVD by more than 2:1 in Europe. Going into Q4, SPHE has a strong slate on deck and support from retailers, which should further propel momentum for Blu-ray.”

Neither format is really setting Europe on fire, but BD is strongly leading HD DVD in that market - even more so than in the US.

The press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

TiVo just issued a press release detailing their financial results for 2Q07, and their conference call just ended.

TiVo’s highlights are:

• Introduced popularly priced high definition box, the TiVo(R) HD DVR
• Comcast to fund development for additional platforms, including Scientific Atlanta set top boxes
• Announced ‘Buy on Box’ capability for Amazon Unbox(TM) service
• Net loss was $17.7 million, including a standard definition product inventory related write-down of $11.2 million
• Adjusted EBITDA loss was $11.2 million, also including the standard definition product inventory related write-down of $11.2 million
• Service and Technology revenues were $56.5 million in the second quarter

As a geek, I’m more interested in the products and technologies than the financials. Reading through the press release, one of the first things I noticed is that Comcast has agreed to fund further development of the OCAP software to bring it to additional platforms beyond the Motorola DVRs, including Scientific Atlanta DVRs. That’s significant and it opens up possibilities for TiVo in SciAtl markets.

Probably obviously, the TiVo HD will be TiVo’s main focus going forward. The TiVo HD is still being subsidized in the retail channel but at reduced levels compared to the older SD boxes, and it has basically no subsidy in direct sales. Which would mean TiVo’s costs on the HD are around $300. The lower, or eliminated, subsidies mean TiVo’s subscriber acquisition costs will drop and that’s good for business. Retailer orders for the HD are promising and more retailers will be carrying the TiVo HD than had been carrying past units, such as CostCo and Sears.

TiVo on Comcast is continuing to progress well and Comcast stated: “we will commence the TiVo rollout process shortly, which will continue rolling out throughout the fall in Comcast’s New England Division including metro Boston, Southeast Massachusetts and New Hampshire.” Tom Rogers, quoting a ‘very senior’ person from Comcast said “You’ll see some real action in September and even more action in October in the roll-out front.” And, as I said above, Comcast is funding additional development for more platforms, which indicates a strong commitment to the product.

Rogers made a few comments relating to DirecTV during his statements and the Q&A, and he danced around anything beyond the previously announced feature updates coming in 2008. It was mention that, in addition to the user-centric features that were announced, updates to the advertising platform - bringing DirecTiVos inline with offerings on the standalone products - will be part of the update. But, reading between the lines, based on what he said and emphasized, as well as what he didn’t say, I think TiVo and DirecTV are in discussions for new products going forward and we might hear something about new TiVo-based DVRs down the road. That might not pop until early next year, since I doubt they’d be able to engineer a product and have it out this year, and neither TiVo nor DirecTV would want to poison holiday sales of their current products with people waiting for a product. Personally I’m starting to think a new box is more likely than not.

They slipped a new feature announcement in their subtly, in the context of Amazon Unbox: “With the upcoming addition of progressive downloading, subscribers will be able to easily and quickly find, download and begin viewing almost immediately the content that they want, when they want.” I believe this is the first time we’ve ever heard about progressive downloading as a coming feature. What this means is that, unlike today where TiVoCast and Unbox downloads need to finish downloading before they can be watched, you’d be able to start watching a download as soon as it begins. And the only restriction would be your download speeds - as you’d need the download to out-pace the viewing speed. This is a nice addition, I hope we see it before the end of the year.

They also confirmed that the HD TiVo hardware being developed for Australia will be based on the DVB-T standard and that TiVo plans to leverage that development work for platforms for the other DVB-T markets. And Cablevision Mexico is expected to begin distributing TiVo units to its customers within the next week or two, so that deal is moving forward rapidly.

One thing I was hoping to hear mentioned, that wasn’t, was Switched Digital Video (SDV). I thought surely someone would ask about it, the potential impact on TiVo’s sales, and the proposed solution from the NCTA during the Q&A - but no one did.

TiVo’s financial results were badly hurt by the cost of an inventory write-down and inventory charge related to the Series2DT product. Their net loss was $17.7 million, or $0.18 cents a share, with $11.2 million coming from the charges. Without the charges the loss would’ve been $6.5 million, and around $0.06 cents a share, which is closer to the 5-cents the street expected. Despite the unexpected expenses, TiVo is maintaining their stance of Adjusted EBITDA breakeven for Fiscal 2008.

Mr. Rogers continued, “Increased consumer demand for high definition products, which accelerated retailers’ movement toward high definition sales, resulted in a continuation of the tepid trend in standard definition sales. Consequently, we ended the quarter with higher than anticipated inventory levels of long-lead time components and parts related to our standard definition product. Because of the continuing HD trend, it was prudent to reserve against this long-lead time inventory. It is noteworthy that the analog basic cable market as well as homes currently not looking to upgrade to high definition television present an opportunity for us as the TiVo standard definition product is the only option for the these approximately 30 million homes where DVRs are desirable. We are not abandoning this space, but have to re-focus our marketing efforts to reach this consumer since retailers are now fully focused on HD.”

It sounds like sales of the S2DT fell off much faster than expected and retailers aren’t picking up additional inventory of the SD products, focusing instead on the TiVo HD. So TiVo had to cut back, perhaps stop, manufacturing of the S2DT. Which is what created the charges. Based on comments on the call, TiVo is not abandoning the analog market, and they’re still getting ~50% of new subscribers from the analog market. But they’re going to be looking at new ways to market to analog users, and it sounds like they’ll be doing so from existing inventory. So it could mean that the S2DT is effectively out of production, and once current inventory sells out it will be gone. I think that’s logical - the TiVo HD is an effective replacement for the S2DT, and the HD’s cost, and price, should come down over time so by the time the S2DT is sold out it may be better positioned to take over. (And then there is the mysterious TCD653080 part number and those unused analog input traces on the HD’s board.)

TiVo saw 41,000 gross additions of TiVo-owned subscribers, but a net loss of 19,000 TiVo-owned subscribers, along with a net loss of 126,000 DirecTV subscribers, on a churn of 1.2%. TiVo attributed most of the losses to the rapid shift in the market to HD, causing existing TiVo subscribers to leave TiVo for HD DVRs - remember the TiVo HD launched just days before the end of the quarter, so it had no significant impact on subscriptions, but it is expected to drive subscriptions going forward. Current subscriber levels stand at 1.708 million TiVo owned (up from 1.572 a year ago), and a total (including DirecTV) of 4.197 million (down from 4.418 a year ago - mostly due to DTV losses, obviously). 59% of subscribers are paying recurring fees, up from 53% a year ago, which is good for TiVo. ARPU (Average Revenue Per Subscription) for TiVo-owned subs is up to $9.08 a month, from $8.82 a year ago, while DTV subs are down to $0.86 from $0.96. Roughly 180,000 subscriptions are lifetime subs which have passed their 4-year mark, meaning they no longer generate subscription revenue for TiVo.

For me the big news items from the call are progressive downloads and Comcast’s funding of further OCAP development, especially for SciAtl. And the implication that things are afoot with DirecTV for additional work above and beyond what was announced.

Remember back on August 17th when I posted about the upcoming release of Roxio’s Popcorn 3? Well, it is here - it was released today.

The press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

WeaKnees.com dropped me an email to let me know they are running a special on the Humax TiVo/DVD-RW combo units. The special is on both the standard unit and expanded units.

The stock DRT400 with 40GB (40 hours) drive is $49, a DRT400 with 300GB (350 hours) drive is $149, DRT400 with 500GB (600 hours) is $249, and a DRT400 with 750GB (900 hours) is $449. All prices are after a $150 mail-in rebate, and include free shipping.

Oh, and one important fact - these boxes are still eligible for $299 *LIFETIME* service from TiVo. Yes, TiVo dropped lifetime a long time ago. But, due to the terms of their contract with Humax, they are still required to offering on new activations for Humax combo units. So this is a way to get a TiVo with the elusive lifetime service!

Amazon isn’t picking sides in the format war - they just want your money. But now they’re giving you more for your dollar.

They’re currently running specials on the Sony PlayStation3 and on Toshiba HD DVD players. Buy a 60GB or 80GB PS3 or a Toshiba HD-A2, HD-A20, or HD-XA2 and get eight free movies with your purchase (Blu-ray or HD DVD, respectively, of course). The PS3 deal is even better than that. You get the PS3 and the free movies for less than the cost of the PS3! The discount is applied at checkout, and I don’t know if something is broken or what, but I tested it by putting the 60GB PS in in my cart for $499.99, and three movies each $20.95. But at checkout there are two promotions applied - one for $62.85, the cost of the three movies as expected, but also another one for $20.95. So the total came to $479.04 - less than the price of the PS3 alone! No such luck on the HD DVD deal, though the HD-A2 is discounted from the MSRP of $299.99 to just $238.88, so no reason to complain really.

Basically, Amazon is giving you three free movies at the time of purchase, and then you use the five-free movie mail in offers that both camps are currently running for the other five - for a total of 8. See Amazon for the PS3/Blu-ray offer or the Toshiba/HD DVD offer.

A hat tip to Gizmodo for both deals.

And in related news, Canadian CE vendor Venturer (no, I’d never heard of them either) has announced that they plan to bring a “low-cost” HD DVD player to the market in time for the holidays. The unit is the SHD7000.

While the company is based out of Ontario, the player is manufactured by their Chinese manufacturing partner. In other words, they just OEM boxes from Chinese vendors like countless other brands. Going by their website this is a company that currently has *one* DVD player, and it is a VHS/DVD recorder combo box.

They don’t provide many details on the box - like the actual price. But the basic specs sound a lot like the Toshiba HD-A2, Toshiba’s lowest-end box with 1080i output. (As opposed to 1080p of the higher level units.) The products on their website have links to Wal*Mart Canada for purchase, so that might be a tip as to where we might expect to find this HD DVD deck for sale. Of course, Walmart.ca only actually has one of their products. And Walmart.com only has two of their products - and they’re both out of stock. So maybe not.

Without a price, other than retail prices expected to be one of the lowest among entry-level HD DVD players, there isn’t much real news here aside from the basic news of another vendor joining Toshiba, RCA and Onkyo making dedicated HD DVD players. Since Toshiba is widely expected to push the MSRP of their forthcoming HD-A3 even lower (I’m betting on $199.99), the Venturer box would have to be less than that to be worth buying. Given the little they’ve announced on the features, they’d have to have a significant price advantage to woo buyers from a known brand like Toshiba.

That’s one place where Toshiba’s aggressive subsidizing of HD DVD players can hurt them. They’ve artificially driven the price point for entry level HD DVD players so low that it discourages other vendors from entering the market at the low end. It is hard to make a profit while still being competitive with Toshiba’s players without cutting a lot of corners. And Toshiba certainly doesn’t want poor quality players on the market tarnishing HD DVD’s reputation either.

Hat tip to EngadgetHD.